As it turns out, the internet is a great way to restart communications when it seems to be all but broken down. 

Less than 24 hours after my “Boycott G-Tech” post on SuiteTake.com, I received several calls from executives at both G-Technology as well as Hitachi. The calls came in while I was editing so they went to voice mail, but when I had a chance to finally call one of them back I was pleasantly surprised that the tone of the conversation was very constructive and apologetic.

At this point I’ve had a few phone calls with Todd Etherton, who is the Director of World Wide Customer Support at Hitachi. The very first thing he said was that they were very sorry for the experience that I had with their tech support team, and that they agreed that something needed to be changed. We talked for about 10 minutes and then I asked him to call me back when they had a plan actually in place so that I could talk about it on the blog (instead of speculate about what they might do). 

The next morning (still less than 48 hours since my post hit) I get another call (again while I’m editing) and I call him back in the evening on my way home. Todd tells me that in response to my blog post, they have made a few significant changes that will alleviate a repeat experience like the one that I had. 

First, everyone at G-Tech that is in the position of receiving a tech support or customer support call is being brought up to speed on the proper way to handle out of warranty big box units, like the G-Speed XL. Clearly there was not much of a plan before, so people really were not sure what the policy was. That’s no longer the case (or will not be in the very near future). He also agreed that instead of a customer support tech parsing out information one little thing at a time, more information should be offered by the tech right up front, knowing that I still need to get my unit fixed. This would have cut the exchanges down to only a couple of emails and saved both of us a lot of time. 

The second (and more major) change is that G-Technology is contracting with another company to make all necessary parts for the G-Speed and G-Speed XL units available for purchase to customers directly who are out of warranty. 

The way it will work in the near future is like this:

Let’s say you have a bad power supply, or a fan that stops working. You call G-Tech and find out that your unit is out of warranty, so they can’t cover the repair under the warranty agreement. However, they will give you the contact information of the company that will sell you the parts you need directly (this info will also be available on their website). They are close to having a final agreement with a partner that will help them facilitate this, and already have a tentative agreement with the parts manufacturer to allow them to sell the parts for G-Tech products directly to this other vendor. While I personally would prefer to deal just with G-Tech directly and not have to get another company involved, at least it’s a solution that works. I am no longer left stranded with a broken unit. 

As you might imagine, this sort of thing can not happen over night. It involves contract details to be worked out and I’m sure legal approval from many parties. So in the mean time, G-Tech has changed its “out of warranty” policy and has an updated statement on their website. 

Basically, if you have a problem – give them a call and chances are very good they are going to take care of you. They plan to do this until they have finished executing their plan to have a 3^rd party company help out. 

So, all is all that ends well? 

It’s too early to say. I will admit I was very impressed with how Todd handled the conversation and the problem, and was very open and honest with not only what they were doing, but the challenges involved. But I could tell that he and the company were both surprised and embarrassed about the experience that I had, and they did not want anybody else to have the same issue. They took it very seriously and were moving fast to make whatever changes needed to be made. I got the impression from Todd as well as others that had left voice mail messages, that they were as surprised as I was. 

In the longer term, time will tell if this was a one-time issue or a sign of things to come. I always have to balance the fact that G-Tech of today is not the exact same G-Tech as before, given then have been purchased twice, and now that Western Digital is purchasing Hitachi, it will be the third time. That’s 3x removed from the original company and management structure, and I know from having lived through that type of experience that things can get very messy, and often do.  

I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now, and let the chips fall where they may over the next several years. 

In my continuing effort to find a solid, reliable and affordable solution for long term archival of our editing projects, I have spent the last 12 months testing and creating a workflow for yet another product solution. Unlike when I reviewed the Cache~a a few years back (the positive review since removed from the site), I decided to spend a lot more time really running it through the paces. I learned my lesson the hard way with the Prime Cache and made changes to my review process.

The product that I’m reviewing this time is the “Edit Bay Production Desktop” software and hardware package from the Tolis Group. It has turned out to be quite the winner, and I’m excited to share our experience with it. While they do offer several different solutions of hardware/software or software only solutions (you provide the hardware), I’m going to focus on this one all in one package. It’s my feeling that this is the best fit for the small to medium sized post house with 1-5 workstations. To see some of their offerings, check out their website.

http://www.tolisgroup.com

What’s Included – Installation

What I liked about the “Edit Bay Production Desktop” package right from the onset was that it was a complete solution for your Mac. You provide a G5 tower, Xserve or MacPro computer with a open PCIe slot (must be a 8x slot), and they provide you with everything else.

In your open PCIe slot you will install a SAS host bus adaptor. The card they provide is the ATTO ExpressSAS H680, and it was as easy to install as a video card. It’s as simple as removing the side panel of your tower and adding the card to your open slot.

(Above is the Expansion Slot Utility that is on most, but not all Power Macs. Because the system we have the card installed on (a quad G5) does not support this utility, I took this snap from a different computer in the office just to show the utility. So don’t be surprised that in this shot the ATTO card is not listed. This utility allows you to configure the speed of your slots by dividing up the bandwidth in whichever way best suits your setup)

Once booted up, you install a driver for the ATTO card from the included CD, reboot again and the card is ready for use.

After that, turn the machine off and attach the LTO drive. Depending on the package that you choose, you will receive either a LTO-4 or LTO-5 drive. Both are HP drives in a external case. We have the LTO-5 drive.

With the LTO drive attached and the machine booted up, install the BRU Producer Edition software (from here on referred to as BRU PE) . This is really the heart of the product and is written for OSX specifically. Installation is as easy as mounting the included CD ROM or downloaded .dmg disk image and running the installer. Now you’re ready to start.

Hardware Details

As mentioned, the LTO drive is a Hewlett Packard unit inside of a external case, and has a single SAS connector. The case is nothing special, and if anything is a bit on the ugly side. In this case, form did not follow function, it just never showed up to the party. It’s not a big deal given that the unit will be located out of sight in most instances, but it’s still worth noting.

But there is one thing I really dislike about the case. It is noisy. I don’t have any sound measuring equipment, but being the nerd that I am I can tell you this unit is LOUD when it’s on. Too loud if you ask me. And I’m not talking about when the tape is shuttling all over the place (it’s even louder then), I’m saying just when you flip on the power button. I don’t think any attempt was made what so ever to make this thing quite, and it is far too loud to have in a edit suite while you’re working. Even if you’re not doing sound editing, it will drive you insane after awhile. We DO have it in a edit suite, but only run the backups after hours because of the noise it creates. When I return in the morning and open the edit suite door, it sounds like I’m entering a machine room that’s full of all kinds of hardware fans.

I asked Tollis about this, and they said they didn’t consider this to be a noisy unit. I disagree, especially when you’re selling it as a “Edit Bay” product. There’s nothing physically wrong with the unit, it’s not as if a fan is broken, so it’s just the way it was designed. We plan to relocate ours into a machine room soon with all of the other noisy gear.

Our Setup

It’s important to note that all of our backups are done over gigabit ethernet. What that means is that we can keep the LTO-5 software and hardware on a central machine, but still access every machine in the office to do backups. In our case, we only have 2 places that the editing projects and media are stored, but neither of those are on the local machine running BRU PE.

As shown in the diagram, we have multiple machines accessing 2 main media drives, and a G5 that we use exclusively for BRU PE.

Software Overview

Having used a few different backup programs over the years, I can tell you that backup software (regardless of backup media type) falls into two categories. There is the really full featured software that was well thought out and does virtually everything you need, but is somewhat complicated to learn and use. And in the other camp you have the software that’s very easy and intuitive to use, but falls short of doing anything beyond the most basic tasks and usually lacks some critical features. I think this is the first time I’ve used a piece of backup software that straddle both camps nicely.

If there’s one thing that hits you when you first start using BRU PE, it’s that it’s so simple it’s almost disturbingly easy to use. I kept thinking I must be missing something, or maybe I was doing something wrong and just didn’t know it yet. But that was not the case.

Here are the general steps to creating a backup in its most basic form.

1. Launch the program.
2. Drag and drop full volumes, folders or individual files from direct attached or network mounted machines into the main window
3. Click on the “Create Archive” button.
4. Go have lunch and see a movie.

Seriously, it’s THAT EASY. That’s not to say that there are not more options that you could choose, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. This in itself is proof that just as their promotional information points out, you can train the most junior level of your staff to do this in just a few seconds. Even after using the Cache~a product (the Prime Cache) for nearly 2 years, I never felt like I had a good handle on how it worked or even what a good workflow was. Who knew that well thought out, well designed and properly executed software could be both powerful and easy to use!?

If you do nothing more than click on the “create archive” button, here is what will happen.

First, the software will scan the files that you dragged to the window and display a estimated size of the final archive. This is handy to make sure your final archive is not larger than the media you are putting it on (although you can span tapes, so that in itself is not a big deal).

If you do nothing, this dialog will go away after 30 seconds and it will start the archiving process. Obviously, how long it takes has everything to do with the amount of data you’re backing up, but generally speaking it’s very fast. There is a very nice, good looking progress window that provides all kind of useful information.

Once the archive has been created, the software will then automatically verify the archive. This is the process of comparing the data on the hard drive to the data on the tape and making sure everything matches perfectly. What’s interesting is that this is done a a 2k level, checking and comparing at 2k intervals. While this adds a bit more to the final archive size, what you get in trade is a much more robust ability to catch errors during the backup and recover from them later should you have any on the tape.

After the verify is done, a summary is displayed with several reporting options.

In addition to doing full backups, BRU PE also handles both differential and incremental backups, giving you flexibility on how you want to handle your archives. This comes in most handy if you’re doing regular scheduled backups of full systems and don’t want to backup everything all the time.

That’s the very simple overview of how it works. In a later section I’ll go into more detail of how we use the unit and what our post-production work flow is.

TAR vs BRU Format

It’s probably a good idea to compare the BRU archive format to what many would consider the long standard of tape backup, TAR.

The majority of tape backup systems are based on the long standing TAR format. TAR has been around for many years and is a cross platform standard for tape backups. I’m generally in favor of open standards vs closed standards (but don’t try to take any of my iOS devices from me!). There is comfort in knowing a technology does not reside with a single company. But that’s not the whole picture to consider, or even the most important when it comes to creating backups.

As The Tolis Group tells the story, the BRU format was created because of the shortcomings of the very old unix based TAR format (TApe Archive). While the TAR format has been around for many years and is widely used and accepted, that doesn’t come without flaws. Just a few of the shortcomings include lack of Checksum-based Verification, Recognition of Media Errors During Backup and the ability to recover from corrupted media. The BRU format was designed to fill in the gaps of TAR and to provide new modern features that make backups more robust and reliable.

While this review is of the Mac version of BRU PE, the fact is that if you create a backup tape on a Mac system, you can later restore it on any other supported system, using any other version of the BRU software. For example, you can take your OSX created archive and with the proper software and the catalog file, restore it using BRU Server for Windows or BRU Workstation on Oracle/Sun Solaris.

One thing that BRU handles very well, is metadata on your files. Unlike so many other backup systems we’ve tried (especially the Cache~a device) all of the important metadata is included as part of your backup and restore process. For example, file attributes such as ownership, permissions, creation and modification dates are all retained through the backup and restore process. Even hard and symbolic links are reproduced with all of their attributes intact.

If you’re interested in knowing more, BRU has a great white paper on their website that explains the significant differences.

Our Workflow

One of the most important parts of any backup plan is having a good workflow. You need a way to communicate when a project is done, when it’s prepped and ready to be archived, when the archive is complete and verified and when it’s OK to delete the media and free up drive space. It’s also a good idea to keep track of what’s on each tape as well with a cataloging system. After many revisions and improvements to our workflow, we finally have what I would consider a solid plan in place. That’s what I will describe here. While the details I describe here are very specific to our setup, you should easily be able to adapt it to your operation, even if you’re not using BRU or a LTO backup system.

Finder Organization

A good foundation starts in the finder. Our projects are either ACTIVE projects, or COMPLETED projects. By default, if a project is not complete it keeps the ACTIVE project status until it is complete. This can be anywhere from a few months to over a year in some cases (although that’s rare).

At Edit Creations we have 3 main edit suites, and they share two different Fibre RAID systems. We have what I have always called a semi-poor mans shared drive system. The two MacPros we have are attached directly to their own dedicated RAID systems over 4-gig fiber. But those dedicated drives are shared over Gigabit Ethernet with each other, and a MacBook Pro laptop edit system. Overall, it works out great. It allows us to open and edit with any project, in any of the 3 rooms, and have access to everything – even the render files. The MacBook Pro has no projects stored locally, and instead uses both of the RAID drives from the two MacPro Systems. This works out great because we can use a small SSD drive in the Laptop to speed it up while using the RAID drives for all of the heavy storage.

On each of the RAID drives, we have a series of folders.

Active projects are stored in a single folder, and are organized by job number. We follow a rigid folder structure that’s the same starting point for every job.

If a project is complete, it’s moved to the “Project Archive” on the same RAID drive that it’s currently located. There are 3 different phases of a project that is considered complete.

1) Needs Media Managing

2) Ready to Archive

3) Ready to Delete

Here’s how each of those stages are handled.

Needs Media Managing

About once a month I look over all of the projects listed in the “Active Projects” folder, and I have each editor do the same thing. While multiple editors may work on the same project, there’s almost always one person that’s considered the lead editor on a job and is ultimately responsible for the job.

As the projects are reviewed, projects that are considered complete are highlighted in the finder using the YELLOW label. Once done reviewing the active projects folder, all of the projects marked in YELLOW are moved to the stage 1 folder of the project archive folder – Needs Media Managing.

Each of the projects located in this folder now need the final sequences in the edit folder media managed so that all of the media used in the final edited sequences is included inside of the project folder. The main goal at this point is to create an archived project that can be opened at a later date and edited if needed. All of this media needs to be consolidated into the project folder, not the capture scratch folder.

Again, since we use a template driven work flow, there is always a bin in every FCP project called “Edit”. During the process of archiving, everything inside of the edit bin is media managed and consolidated into the project folder, so that everything needed to open that job is in a single location.

In the example shown here, there were several sequences for this single project (I shutter to think how I would have to handle this in FCPx). There were many versions of this final video for different regions, and in different languages. I want to have each and every final sequence in a form that allows me to easily make revisions should I need to in the future.

With the “Edit” bin selected, I select Media Manager and am presented with a window of options that help me decide how I want to handle the media for these sequences. Because I don’t want to save absolutely everything, I need to optimize the settings here.

I choose to COPY the media from these sequences, but also choose to discard any media that was not used in the final sequences. This alone saves a ton of space on most projects. While you can add handles that will give you some wiggle room on each shot, I almost always choose not to do this. I rarely need it, and over time it’s just wasted space on the backup tape unless you really need it.

The location of the archived media is set to the “Project Archive” folder inside of the current project folder, and the new FCP project file that it creates is saved in the FCP Project folder with the exact same name, but with “PA” appended to the end (we always use “PA” to represent Project Archive”.

Once this process is complete, the folder is then turned orange in the finder and moved into the second folder labeled “Ready to Archive”.

Ready to Archive

Once enough projects are moved to the “Ready To Archive” folder, they are organized into subfolders. Each of the subfolders is named with the name of the LTO tape it will be going on, and projects are added and subtracted until the folder size is around 1.2 TB. This is the approximate size that we know will fill a LTO-5 tape, but still leave a bit or breathing space. While we could avoid the subfolder process and do all of the organization inside of the BRU PE software, we have found over time that it’s just more flexible to work it all out in advance, and then just copy that single “pre weighed” folder to the LTO tape.

With the folder organized and the proper size, we’re ready to archive it.

Using BRU

Creating an archive is so simple, you have to wonder how other companies like Cache~a have missed the mark by so much. At its most basic, it’s a drag and drop function. At its most complex, you have some additional options and navigation, but it’s still stupid simple. Let’s take a look at the easy option first – what BRU calls QuickArchive View.

QuickArchive View

When you first launch BRU PE you are asked for an administrator password for that machine. This is not for security purposes or access control, but instead to allow BRU PE to properly restore files with the correct permissions/metadata, and to the location of your choosing. As the notice on the screen says, you can still operate the software without it, but you may have read/write issues later.

Once open, you’re presented with a very simple mac like interface. In fact, the only way to get files loaded into the window is by doing a drag and drop. As mentioned earlier, we pre-prep our folders with the jobs we need to archive, and make sure that folder will fit onto the tape that we have. This is especially helpful if we’re trying to top off a tape.

Please note that this review was written on and off over several months, so as a result some of the continuing action screen shots will not match up. For example, the folder we prepared was for Archive 85, but the one I’m showing in this example is Archive 88.

As you can see, there are only a few checkboxes, and most are self explanatory. At this point it’s as simple as dragging our folder onto the file window and releasing the mouse.

While it has defaulted to “Append Archive”, which will continue to add to a previous archive tape that still has room on it, in this case I’m going to be using a new tape, so it will actually end up being a overwrite.

If you had the “provide job metadata information” box checked, this screen will appear allowing you to add other details about the archive. In general, we don’t actually use this feature since we have a very rich index of everything we archive though CDFinder (covered shortly).

One nice feature that I like is the preview mode. Before it starts writing to a tape, it gives you an estimate as to how much space you will need on the tape. This will help you catch problems prior to spending hours of backup time, only to find out you were 500 megs short of space on the tape. If you don’t respond to the estimate, it will continue with the archive after 30 seconds automatically.

Now that the archive is running, you’re presented with a very satisfying information screen that shows the progress, what file it’s currently working on and a time estimate. I say satisfying because watching how fast some of the files are getting backed up gives me a nice warm feeling inside.

Once the operation is complete, you’re presented with the final screen that gives you a few different options. This is one of the best features of the software.

First, you can create what BRU PE calls a “BRUsetta Stone CD”, that contains the tape catalog, metadata and a copy of the BRU PE software. This is great if you need to restore that tape using another machine, because it includes everything you will need to get the job done.

The second option is to export the catalog file for backup, or to move the tape to another system for restore (assuming that other system already has the software installed).

The third option (the one that we use) is to print the details of the job, including every file that was backed up, error messages (if any) and backup and verification information. We don’t print it out to paper, we just print to a PDF and keep it stored on the server for reference should we ever need it. A typical backup job for us creates a report that’s often over 100 pages long, so if you really do send it to a printer, make sure to have a few extra reams of paper standing by.

The one thing that we always verify in the report is that there were no errors during backup or verification. As long as both of those numbers are “0”, the backup is considered solid and we pop the tape and add it to the shelf.

We also setup the BRU PE software to send a email to all the editors on staff when it’s complete, because that too includes a more boiled down summary of the job, and if it was completed successfully.

Advanced View

For most people, the QuickArchive View is going to get the job done. What I really like about it is that it’s hard to get confused over something so simple. But if you are feeling like you don’t want the dumbed down interface, take a look at the advanced view. At anytime, you can switch between them just by clicking the icon in the upper right corner.

In the advanced view, the 2 main options that are added are the ability to navigate to specific areas using the shortcut icons, and the ability to schedule regular backups using the scheduling function. You can drag and drop files in this mode, but you can also navigate around the hard drive and add files and folders by double clicking on them. This brings me to one of my complaints about the software.

When you’re navigating around the file system on OSX, in the finder or in most programs, double clicking on a folder is how you open it to expose its contents. Not so when using BRU. To get the same result inside of BRU PE you’re forced to click on the little disclosure triangle for the directory, which will open it up to expose the contents (which also works in the finder). However, if you by instinct double click on a folder to open it, it will not actually open it but instead add it to the list of items to be archived. This is extremely counter intuitive, and hard to overcome even once you know it because it’s so second nature to use this action when opening folders. It certainly flies in the face of the Apple Interface Guidelines. If you’re not careful, you can easily end up adding additional files and directories that you had no intention of backing up. This really surprises me given how mac-like the software is otherwise. This is probably one of the reasons that I prefer the QuickArchive View.

Operation otherwise is the same. You can get into saving job definitions, which is like a backup set but I’m not going to cover that since it’s not applicable to the type of archives we’re talking about here.

Tape Doubler

While this review covers the single drive setup that’s best for the edit bay, it’s worth noting that if you had 2 drives attached, BRU PE has a nice feature called “Doubler Mode”. This allows you to backup the same data to two different tapes, without having to run the same archive process twice. If you’re in the habit of making one copy for on-site storage, and one for off-site storage, this could be a big time saver. We only have a single drive, so we were not able to test this feature ourselves.

Archive Library

There’s no point of going through all this work if you can’t find what you need later. We have a pretty simple library system that was easy to put into place. While BRU PE does have its own internal library system (covered later), we find our solution to be better for our workflow.

Once we have a 1-1 duplicate of a archive folder to LTO tape, and we have verified that the contents of both are the same (using the verify function as part of the BRU PE software), we scan and catalog the folder that was the source for that particular tape. By doing so, we have a complete listing of what is on the tape that we can search anytime from any computer in the office, while the tapes are sitting on the shelf. The program we use to do this is called “CD Finder” from West-Forest-Systems.

CDFinder

Don’t let the name throw you. CDFinder is a cataloging/indexing program that works with everything from removable media to full hard drives. I’m actually surprised that they have not rebranded the program yet given how dated the software sounds just based on the name itself. I would guess they even miss out on sales because people see the “CD” and think “I don’t even use CD’s”.

But unlike many programs I’ve tried in the past, CDFinder does the job perfectly, is a light-weight program that launches fast and indexes almost as fast, and finding that needle in the haystack is as simple is typing in a search term and hitting return. I also appreciate that the programmer (Norbert M. Doerner) keeps the program up to date and is always adding new useful features. Only a few weeks after Lion was released they released a Lion version of their program. When a big OS update like Lion comes out, you really find out which developers are dedicated to their programs and which are not.

I’m not going to do a full review of the CDFinder program, you can do that yourself or watch some of their video tutorials on-line. What I will do is give you the basics of how we use it.

Because over time we’ve had different series of archives (hard drives, then LTO, and some client specific) we created a few folders inside of CDFinder to organize our catalog files.

Inside of each of those folders is a list of the different media that was cataloged, and what is on each of them.

Creating new catalog is as easy is clicking on the “new” button, and selecting the folder, removable media or hard drive you want a catalog of, and hitting OK. The drive is scanned and a new catalog file is added to the library.

If you really want to get crazy, you can even have CDFinder create thumbnails of images as part of the catalog so when you’re browsing later you can get a sense of the images you’re looking at. Here’s a look at just some of the cataloging options you’re given in CDFinder.

Finding what you want is just as easy. Open the find window, choose the criteria you would like to search by, and hit find. A list of results will appear, and clicking on any of those results in the window with all the info that you need to reload that file or directory.

If I have one gripe about the CDFinder program, it’s that they require that you purchase a “business license” to store the catalog file on a network share. It’s like Microsoft saying you can’t save a word document on your NAS drive because you didn’t buy a business license. I think where I choose to save my file is up to me, and I should’t have to pay extra to add back in a feature that every other program on the planet already includes. You may be wondering why this matters. It matters because if you want to use multiple computers to access the data that you’ve cataloged, you need to put the catalog file in a central location, and then point them all to it. But on the “Private” license (for $39) you are required to save the catalog file locally on the computer the software is installed on. That’s fine if you have one computer, but we can’t get by with just that. So instead, you have to pay $149 for the 2-user business license. That’s right, for more than $100 extra, you get the privilege to save your file on the network, and share it with ONE other user. There are no other additional features in the business licensed program. This is just bad business in my opinion, and does not reflect well on the company.

My gripe aside, I like the program, think that it’s well written and it’s very actively maintained. I’ll step down from my soap box now.

Ready To Delete

Now that everything is on the LTO tapes, cataloged and we’re confident that there are no errors, it’s time to move the projects to the 3^rd and final finder folder, “Ready To Delete”.

This is one of the most important steps in our workflow, and I prefer to save this final step for myself and only myself. The reason being, when it comes to deleting projects from the edit systems – I want to be sure if a mistake is made, it’s on me. I can handle being pissed at myself and I can’t be fired. It also serves as a nice check/balance. I’m able to verify that all of the proper steps were followed before this undoable step.

This is where having such a unique job numbering system comes in extremely handy, and helps keep you from deleting files that you may not want to delete. The goal at this stage is not only to remove the project files that we just backed up to the LTO tape, but to remove ALL files associated with this project, and only this project. That includes the capture scratch and all audio and video render files. And they need to be removed from both RAID drives, since it’s not unusual for projects to be edited in multiple rooms. The way we handle this is with a program called Path Finder. It’s a very full featured Finder replacement, but I only use it for this one purpose – its ability to search multiple local and remote locations at the same time and return all files in a single window.

Path Finder

Path Finder allows you to search your entire computer or specific folders just like the Finder, but unlike version 10.5 or later of the Finder (including Lion) you can not set multiple custom locations. In our case, we limit the search to just the two RAID drives. By doing this, any search that we do on the job number will find every file and folder associated with that job, and nothing more.

And instead of relying on the index file of Spotlight, we have it do a raw search of the drive, ignoring any spotlight information. When searching on remote drives, Spotlight can be hit or miss in our experience and tends to be slower.

Now that we have our search locations setup properly, we’re ready to search and destroy (delete) our projects and all associated media. With the find window open, fill in the full job number. Actually, just to make sure to avoid any errors, I keep two windows open. One with the “Ready to Delete” folder and the other is the find window and results. With both open, I can copy and paste the job number into the name field. I also make sure “Starts With” is selected, because anything I need to delete should start with the job number. This prevents any other documents that might reference this number from being removed.

Click search and almost instantly the lower part of the search window is populated with all of the files and locations that you need to remove. As a habit, I always review the find results and make sure nothing looks unusual. Again, I’m just making sure everything in the window is in fact part of the job that I’m getting ready to remove. Once satisfied, I do a “select all” inside the results portion of the find window and hit Command-Delete to remove all of the files. Local files are moved to the trash can, but remote volume files are deleted immediately – so be careful. So with one stroke of the keyboard, all of your files, from all locations local or otherwise, are removed.

Now I just move down the list of jobs in the “ready to delete” folder and repeat the same steps for each of the job numbers. After that, empty the trash on the local computer and do the happy dance. You’re done and have new free space on your drives.

Restoring Data

While backing up data is very solid using BRU PE, restoring is a bit less intuitive. It’s fine, and it gets the job done, it’s just not quite as smooth.

When you click on the Restore icon in the toolbar, you’re presented with a list of catalog files for each tape that you’ve ever backed up on that particular machine. If there was more than one backup session to on a tape, there will be a number added to the icon as some of the ones here have.

If you select a catalog file, the contents of that will be shown on the right pane. However, this is again one of those minor annoyances. By default it will just show you the root level, and then you will need to click on each and every disclosure triangle just to get to the folder with the data you backed up. And sometimes clicking on the disclosure triangle seems to be sluggish. You may find yourself clicking more than once to get it to open. But OK fine, it does work eventually.

But when you’re ready to find those files, what you’ll really be doing is a search of the catalog. You can click on a single catalog (if you know what tape the file is on), or you can search the entire library all at once.

In this example, I’m choosing to search for just a single job, and I know what the job number is. But what I find amazing in this day and age of things being infinitely searchable, is that you can only search on a single criteria. Normally if I was doing a search like this, I would choose to search using the job number, but then also add another criteria stating that I only want results returned that are folders with that name (because ultimately what I’m looking for is the project folder with that number). This is a big miss with the BRU PE software.

When we use CD-Finder to search for files we need to restore, it can search every archive we’ve ever created (totaling over 100 when you count the HD archives we made in the past and client specific backups) and it can do it in a matter of seconds. Most searches, even complex ones only take about 2-5 seconds. But just performing the simple search I’m showing you here on less than 20 archives took over 3 minutes. And because I couldn’t confine the results to only folders, the results I was returned still left me too much to have to sift through.

This just makes another case for using CDFinder to keep catalogs of all of your archives. Our process is to do a search inside of CD-Finder, find out what tape it’s on, and then just go directly to that tape in BRU PE, find the files or directory and restore them. The whole process is so much faster, not to mention you can do many complex searches with CD-Finder in the time it takes to do just one with BRU.

This is what the search window and restore results (for the same job) look like using CD-Finder.

And this is the results that were returned. Infinitely more usable and user friendly.

But let’s continue down the line of just using the BRU software and how you would restore your files.

Once you have your search results and you’ve parsed out what it is you actually want to restore, you click the check boxes by the files or directories that you want, or you can choose to check all of them using the “add all” check box. You then click on the “Add Checked” button and close the window. You will now be returned to the main window with your selected items added to the window.

The last option to decide on before you start the restore is where these files are going. By default files are restored to their original location from where they were backed up. I guess this can be a good thing for some workflows, but for us this would just cause issues. It means that files would be returned to the “ready to delete” folder, which could cause some confusion. To avoid this problem, check the box that allows you to “Restore to an Alternate location”, and then navigate to any local or network mounted volume.

Now with everything ready to go, insert the tape you are pulling the files off of and click on the restore button. If you have the wrong tape in or the drive is empty, you will be prompted for the correct tape to insert.

When you consider how much data a LTO-5 tape can hold, it’s pretty amazing how fast it can find the files it needs are restores them. Like I mentioned, everything we do is over gigabit ethernet and the speed is still lightning fast.

Once your restore is complete a dialog box will appear letting you know that all was restored well. If what you’ve chosen to restore is on more than one tape, you will be prompted each time a new tape is needed. This is where a library system that can automatically load tapes comes in handy.

Library/Catalog Backup

One problem we did run into during our test period is that at one point we launched the BRU PE program and the library of tapes that we had created (usually listed on the restore screen) were gone. While in practice we don’t use those files to locate files that we’re looking for (as previously mentioned, we use CDFinder and a external catalog file), the BRU PE software does need these files to understand what tapes have been created and what is on each tape. It’s what enables you to quickly restore your files from such a massive tape.

With the help of tech support we were able to restore/rebuild the tapes that we needed by re-inserting each tape and having the catalog files rebuilt, but from that point on we decided that we should have a regular backup of that information. Even on the Tolis website they recommend that you do this.

All of the important files that you need to backup are located at the following location.

/private/var/lib/bru

You may be looking at that “location” and be wondering how the heck you get to it. After all, to most people (other than developers) this is not a familiar location, not to mention it’s hidden from view in the finder. The best way to get to this location is to use the “Go to Folder” command in the finder. While in the finder, click on the drop down menu under “Go” and then select the “Go To Folder” option.

In the next dial box that opens, type in the string outlined above and click GO.

The next finder window that opens will be the folder that you need to keep a backup copy of.

To make sure this always happens on it’s own, we use the program Déjà Vu that keeps this folder synced to our NAS on a daily basis. I would strongly recommend that you implement something alone the same lines to save you possible frustration later.

User Manual

Being a bit of a manual geek, I can tell you that the BRU PE user manual is one of the better manuals I’ve read. It’s written in a way that’s easy to understand and gets right to the point. It covers every aspect of the software in much more detail than I’m doing here and even makes some recommendations on the topic of workflow. I also enjoyed the landscape format, which made it comfortable to read on my iPad.

While the manual is 186 pages long, probably around a third of it is terminal commands. If you’re really feeling like the BRU PE GUI is just too easy to use, launch the Terminal app and try your hand at typing it all in by hand. Personally, I have zero interest in this, but there must be enough people out there to justify the detail they put into the manual in covering this topic.

Future Proof Archives?

So now you have a solid backup of your projects, and maybe you even made a second copy to keep off site at home or in a safe deposit box. But what if the worst happens and the Tolis Group suddenly goes out of business or stops selling/supporting the product? After all, because they’re using their own proprietary archive format you actually do need BRU in order to recover your tape contents.

Well not to fear. There are two very good pieces of insurance that will let you sleep better at night.

First (as discussed earlier), every time that you create a new archive tape, at the end you are presented with a dialog that lets you create a CD or DVD that includes the catalog file for that tape (basically a list of it’s contents and location on the tape), all metadata, and a copy of the BRU PE Software that you just used to create the tape. They disk also includes installation and restore instructions. So aside from the hardware needed to do a restore, you have everything that you need between the LTO tape and the CD/DVD that you create. They call this disk a BRUsetta Stone CD.

But if the worst happens and the Tollis group goes out of business, they are committed to put the most recent copy of the BRU software in Escrow with the NARAS, and if you’re a member of NARAS you can retrieve a copy if you need it. So it’s not as if you’re going to no longer have access to your data.

Here is my personal take. The Tolis Group has been around since 1985 and has a great history of making great products. I see no reason to worry about them going out of business anytime soon, and even if they did I am left with the tools that I need (through the BRUsetta Stone CD) to restore any tapes I have made over the years. True, I would probably want to start looking for something new to create new archives, but I would not be locked out of my old archives.

The fact is that technology changes so fast that my guess is 5-10 years from now I may not even be using LTO in favor of some newer and greater technology. When that comes along, I’ll move forward as well. And over time, the archives I’m making will have less and less value anyway. While the tapes are rated to last for 30 years, I would be happy if they lasted for half that. No client has ever come back to me for something older than 5-6 years, and that is very rare. My point is, I don’t need to keep these backups until the end of time. And if 30 years from now I had better not be still browsing my LTO-5 tapes and restoring jobs for clients. If I am, my life has taken a very bad turn somewhere along the line.

Go Beyound with BRU Server

While the focus of this review has been on backing up your edit projects, if you’re looking for something more comprehensive that will backup multiple computers in your office, BRU Server might be something worth looking at. It adds the ability to do client to server automated backups over your network so that entire machines are regularly backed up. The price point is obviously much higher and instead of a single tape drive you would usually use a library system that would hold 12-24 tapes.

And if you REALLY have money to burn, go for their Backup Appliance called bruAPP. This is a standalone device that includes both the BRU Server technology and OS, combined with a tape library system. It’s everything in a single box, and can be configured to hold upwards of 144 TB of storage. It also includes internal disk storage that allows you to “stage” your files for backup so that your local network is not impacted during large backups. If I had the money I would LOVE to have this as part of my office backup strategy.

LTFS

I’ve talked a lot about the BRU format as well as TAR, and some may be wondering about the newer format called LTFS (Linear Tape File System), which has been brought to light by IBM to address some of the shortcomings of the TAR format. This format promises the use of LTO tapes directly on the desktop, allowing you to mount them to your desktop and use them more like you would use a mounted hard drive. One of the significant advantages of this format is that the catalog is included on the tape, so in theory if you have the proper software installed you could mount a tape on any machine just by popping it into the drive.

On the surface this sounds pretty awesome. We all know how to interact with hard drives and to see a tape mounted on the desktop that you can just drag and drop files to/from sounds like the holy grail. That is, until you get into the details of it. I’ve looked into it and talked to a few engineers about their opinions and here’s the short answer of what you need to know.

The LTFS file system has issues with slow access to files, no knowledge of an unmounted tape, single user access and limited file type compatibility. In addition, cross platform file exchanges are problematic because different software and drivers need to be written specifically for each platform, and may not be able to read tapes or files created on other systems. In short, in the current incarnation of the format it falls short of being a solid backup format and almost borders on being expermintal. While it’s possible that down the road this will change that remains to be seen. And after all, we’re talking about what is possible right now, not in the future.

So while I was initially very excited about what the LTFS file format might provide, as usual the sales pitch is better than the actual facts behind it. At the time of this writing the BRU folks have no plans of supporting the format as it now stands, and I think that’s a good thing. Just adopting a new format because it’s the latest and “greatest” thing is not always the best thing. I think it says a lot about their engineering team that they have investigated it and decided it was not up to par for their products.

If you would like to read more about the format yourself, you can find a pretty detailed entry on Wikipedia here.

Cost of Ownership

While the software can be purchased as a standalone product for $499, in most cases you’re going to want to buy the hardware bundle unless you already own a tape drive that you want to use. As part of the whole package, the software is cheaper with the bundled price. With all of their bundles you get a license for the BRU PE software and 1 year of support. Support includes help using the software, but also includes any upgrades to the software beyond bug fixes that are released during your 1 year period.

If you let the 1 year support contract lapse, you can still use the software but will not be eligible for upgrades to the software. I’m not sure that’s a big deal, because generally speaking if it’s working, it’s working. It does everything I need it to, so I’m not sure what features might be added that had me wanting to upgrade.

If you do decide to continue your support contract, it will cost you $199 per year and you would get all major updates (say version 2 to version 3) included in that price. If you don’t have it, and the same software is released you can still purchase the software for $249.

Overhead or Money Maker?

One of the big misses that many editors make in my opinion is passing on their ability to turn this process into a service that they sell to their clients. The big complaint that I hear is that buying software and hardware like this can be expensive, and it really can. But not prohibitively so. The fact is, people do need archives of their projects and in many cases they are willing to pay you to take care of it for them, and to keep track of everything. On top of backing up editing projects, another big room for growth has been backup camera originals from tapeless media, which is all we shoot anymore.

I can only speak from our own experience and tell that in far less than a year we were turning a profit on doing backups over what we had paid on both the hardware/software and the tapes we purchased to do the backups. We charge a flat fee per project, and in most cases can fit more than a single project on a tape. So a single 1.5 TB LTO-5 tape can generate anywhere between $500 and $1,500 in revenue depending on the size of the projects. It’s pretty easy to do the math and see how this is not much of a risk in the long run. The fact is, you are offering a very valuable and necessary service.

Here’s how we approached it. I ask every client this question. “As part of doing this project, would you like me to back it up to a long term storage tape for future access, or do you want me to just delete everything when I’m done?” What would you say to that question?

While we charge a flat fee for creating an archive of each project, we don’t charge anything for restoring files. So the client can recall those files as much as needed and know that they will not be billed for it.

It’s seriously something to consider when you’re looking at creating your archiving system, your workflow and a library system. While it might be a lot to get pulled together in the beginning, it’s well worth it in the long run on many fronts.

The SuiteTake

While not without a few minor annoyances, I’m very pleased with the BRU software and hardware bundle. For the first time in a very long time I feel like I have a very solid and robust workflow and backup system. That’s a big deal, because if you don’t have something you have faith in, it can add a lot of stress to your life (at least it has for me in the past).

We have now used this solution for over a year and feel very comfortable saying it’s a nice solid and affordable package, even for a small boutique post house like Edit Creations. I look forward to your comments and your own shared experiences.

It is with great excitement that I am finally able to make an announcement that has been eating at me for nearly a year now. In June of 2009 when the iPhone 3GS was released I had a flash of what the future could hold for editing, and it’s that moment of inspiration that gave birth to the product I’m announcing today.

Our new groundbreaking product, Final Cut Pro Mobile, is now available on the iPhone 3GS. It will also be available on the iPad later this year. You heard me right – the full suite of FCPS apps have been ported to the iPhone 3GS, and in some cases, we’ve been able to add additional features not found in the current offerings from Apple.

Much of our inspiration at SuiteTake.com to create this mobile suite was inspired by the growing interest in editing projects outside of the office. While the edit suite has been the traditional place to get your project done, technology no longer limits us to just a single location. And it was with that vision in mind that we marched forward with the project. Here is a quick overview of what the new suite includes.

Final Cut Pro M

Starting with the current version of Final Cut Pro 7 from 2009, we included all of the same new features as well as the under the hood improvements from Apple. But we’ve also added some features that are only possible on the iPhone.

For example, with a single swipe of your finger – you can save your project, duplicate it, or permanently delete it – all with the same gesture. Swiping at different speeds determines which of the functions is selected. Now that’s efficient!

Need a quick rough cut of the footage you’ve imported? Just shake your phone up and down 3 times and the built-in accelerometer will create a rough cut using the current ins and outs of each clip. The phone will use our patented Content Detection™ algorithm to analyze dialog, body language and facial expressions. It will then systematically assemble the clips in the most pleasing and logical way.

Motion M

Complete with Open GL acceleration, 3D shadows and real-time playback, you can create graphics at uncompressed 4K or HD resolution while browsing the iTunes store, surfing the web or taking a call from your client. And all of this while you’re outside of the standard ball-and-chain edit suite. Be inspired – be Mobile!

While the standard motion templates that you’re used to are included, we’ve also added the ability to buy templates through the App Store, right inside of Motion M. Using your iTunes account and 3G networking you can download the latest templates where you want, when you want.

Soundtrack Pro M

Using your iPhone earbuds you can mix your latest soundtrack while listening to your favorite iPod playlist, checking your messages with  Google Voice and browsing SFX from the SoundTrack library.  All while walking through the busy city traffic to catch your bus to the beach.

But it’s not just about multi-tasking. SoundTrack Pro M can mix up to 256 tracks of audio in real time, has new MIDI functions available through the dock connector and now includes a cool iTunes-like screen saver to help you  see your audio as you mix. This is part of our new SeeHearMix™ technology.

Color M

Who says you need a $10K monitor to color grade your latest film? Don’t let the monitor industry make a fool out of you any longer! Using the precision color LCD touch screen on the iPhone you can grade like a pro using just your fingertips.

What’s that? You don’t have time to do the grading yourself? Again we tied into the Apple App Store and you can now purchase and download preset looks based on the type of project you’re grading. Some of the categories include Corporate Training Video, Broadcast Reality Show, Broadcast Sitcom, Over Produced Documentary, Low Budget Film, B-Movie, Direct to DVD, Flip Cam to Film Look and Barely Good Enough For YouTube. Each preset will optimize the look and feel of your video based on your target audience.

DVD Studio Pro M

Apple may not have updated DVD Studio Pro, but we sure did.

Need a DVD and need it while on the go? No problem! Plug in your favorite DVD burner and create a Standard Def or Blu-ray DVD on the spot right from your iPhone using our patented USB-BlazeBurn™ technology.

Don’t have a DVD burner? That’s OK too. Master directly to our new SuiteTake.com Print-On-Demand DVD service. Most DVDs will upload over 3G in just 2-3 weeks, and you’ll receive your DVD copies within one calendar year. Let’s face it, you didn’t really need it that fast anyway.

iChat Theater M

Using the iPhone 3GS camera,  you can now chat with your client live while watching your latest cut. You can even conference in up to three other members of the “creative team” to watch and comment on the playback of your sequence while referencing a live timecode window. Getting unwanted needless feedback has never been so easy.

And Finally, Compressor M

Compressor is more then a compression engine – it’s a publishing factory. Set up automated processes that will convert your final video to the proper format and upload it to iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, FaceBook or just a standard FTP site.

As an exclusive to the Mobile FCP Suite, you can even export directly to another iPhone no matter where they are in the world. And all of this over 3G. Take that AT&T!

Need more speed while compressing? Using iPhone QMaster integration you can cluster up to 50 iPhone 3GSs together to cut compression times by up to 8.9%. (Estimated, actual savings can vary. In some cases render times can actually increase up to 75% due to some unknown reason that we’re still baffled by. Due to the increased radiation output of the phones during the render process, women who are pregnant or are hoping to ever become pregnant should limit their exposure to FCPm Qmaster. Do not taunt Qmaster under any circumstances.)

And with our new Social Media plugin architecture, you can send custom notifications to Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and even the Creative Cow Forums. Now all of your fellow editors will know just how frustrated you are by that request to make “one more small change”. Partner deals with Gowalla, FourSquare and DropBox are in the works for late 2010.

I am proud to say that I think we’ve really hit this one out of the park. And we’re just getting started. Since I started using FCP Mobile I’ve realized that having a full size computer is a thing of the past. I used to say I would never give up my Mac Pro. Now I’m starting to ask myself if it even makes sense to have an office. Since I started using FCPm I have barely bothered to show up to work at all.

Still not convinced?

Check out the cover story in the next issue of MacWorld magazine for a full hands on review or read our Press Release.

Can’t wait?

Head over to the App Store and download it now. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are.

Whether or not this ends up being any kind of major player in the editing world is still in question, but I was blown away at the potential capabilities of the system, yet completely shocked in general that they are even deciding to make this. I’ve loved Nintendo for years, dating all the way back to NES, and I think it’s crazy that they would try and make this jump into post-production. I guess they wanted to make the case that video editing should be fun and universal, and shouldn’t be left alone to the technical folk.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the brains behind Nintendo, made the announcement at the Kyoko Electronic Convention in Japan last night.

“Konichiwa! This all began when I had shot a video of my daughter’s birthday party, then I realized that I had too much footage, and it needed to be cut down to a reasonable length. I don’t own any personal editing software. Then I noticed most of my daughter’s friends playing with the Wii, and there were several girls sitting on the futon watching, with nothing to do. Well, what if these 8-year-old girls could not only edit this video for me, but have the same level of fun editing as the the other children playing the Wii?”

That sounds pretty insane to me that editing could be as much fun to an 8-year-old girl as playing the Wii, but he goes on to elaborate how this could potentially work.

“The only way to make editing fun for children and the elderly is to make it universally appealing. Normally you would have to go through school, or at least read the manual to an editing program to learn how to use it, but not with the Nintedit System! Through a series of new innovative gadgets and extremely fun mini games, literally anyone can edit.”

I was extremely curious as to what kind of gadgets and mini-games could possibly be involved with editing. And also how this whole thing works to begin with:

“To import the footage you shot on virtually any camera, you must go through a series of fun, beach-related mini-games to see how much of the footage you get to use. For instance, the better you do at playing Nintedit Import Volleyball, the more of the footage that you shot you get to use! It’s a very intuitive game though, so most people will get most, if not all, of their footage. It is a plastic, full sized volleyball that is tethered to your arm with a cable, it has 112 groundbreaking motion sensors built inside of it, so you can play it anywhere you have room to play it, but within 10 feet of your Nintedit system, of course. But chances are the first few times you play, you will fail, and only get to use a small fragment of your footage. That unused footage will be immediately deleted from the hard drive, and will encourage you to get better at the game for future edits. Nintediting is not only fun, it is a learning experience!”

A press release after the convention also stated that these other “importing games” will be available on launch day, with more to follow in the months after release (all sold separately):

Nintedit Import Surfing
Nintedit Import Dune Buggy
Nintedit Import Hacky Sack
Nintedit Import Flag Football
Super Import Brothers
Donkey Kong’s DVCAM Adventure
Metroid P2
The Legend of Zelda: The VHS of Time

But what of the gadgets, and how does editing actually work?

“Basically it works like this, depending on how many clips you have earned in any of the fun Import Series games, that is how many rounds you will go through in order to edit your video. For instance, if you have won 78 of your video clips, you will have to play a challenging, yet addictive, mini-game for each and every one of your 78 clips, in order to see how, and if, your clip makes it in the final sequence. On average, in testing, we found that Nintediters were getting a little over 100 clips in each of their Nintediting experiences, so in order to make sure it doesn’t get tedious, we have created for the Ninteditor a slew of 7 mini-games to challenge them. This will ensure that no person has to play the same one game over and over again. Instead they have seven to choose from!”

He went on to break down the seven mini-games:

Nintedit Bowling:

“We did a study, and found that literally every single person on the planet enjoys Wii Bowling, excluding a few rogue individuals who we declared insane and had committed to Nintendo work camps. Do to the fact that we are using graphics technology for our system that is only as good as the Nintendo 64, you cannot use Wiimotes, as a complete lack of backwards compatibility is in play. So we have invented a new device, which works much like the nicotine patches my mother-in-law uses. It is a disposable electronic patch, that you can place on any real bowling ball. It is full of tiny motion sensors, and you must also attach them to a set of real bowling pins. Then you can set up your own personal bowling alley in your living room! The amount of pins you knock over determines how many seconds the video clip will play in the Nintedit timeline. We have taken virtual bowling to a level more real then you can imagine! $7.99 for a pack of 3 bowling patches. Bowling ball and pins are not included with the Nintedit System.”

Scissor Harvest:

“In order to reduce the size of a video clip, you must use the wireless, external Nintendo Virtua Scissors, which are basically real scissors, with a motion sensor built in. On the screen, harvest vines will fly at you, and you are wearing 3D glasses by the way I forgot to mention, sold separately, and you will literally run around the room frantically cutting at the virtual harvest vines with the Virtua Scissors. Each vine you cut reduces your clip by one frame. In order to achieve the most realism, the scissor blades are actually real, but of course we have added removable plastic covers to ensure small children and the elderly don’t stab themselves accidentally (laughs).”

Text Shoot ‘Em Up

“Using the brand new Nintendo Sniper Rifle, in combination with the Nintedit Alphabet Display Device, the ADD we call it, you shoot motion sensor bullet rounds at the motion sensor ADD, trying to hit the letters you desire. But you only have a limited time to shoot what you need! The letters you hit appear in that order in your video. Can you say on-screen text anyone? (audience claps) The faster and more accurate you do it, the cooler the transition of the word will be onto the screen. If you are an advanced Nintedit marksman, you can set the ADD across the street, or on a moving swing set at the local playground for some extreme challenges, or if you are a beginner, you can just have your brother or sister hold it for you a few feet away. With motion sensors, anything is possible!”

Nintedit Hero

“You basically play Guitar Hero, and if you beat the song, you get to use it for the video clip you are playing for. Getting note streaks in a row enables the song to be played over multiple clips at once. We are still in the licensing process for the music, but we have a certified 6 songs to be guaranteed available at launch day:

“The Stroke” by Billy Squier
“Happy Birthday” by Patty and Mildred Hill
“Poker Face (DJ Dirty Dave Slow Jazz Remix #3)” by Lady Gaga
“A Very Slash Christmas” by Slash
“Bitches Ain’t Shit” by Dr. Dre
“The Laverne and Shirley Theme Song” by Cyndi Grecco

We are very excited to have such wonderful artists contributing to our Nintedit experience.”

Body Motion Challenge:

“We here at Nintendo have come to the realization that Americans are horribly, horribly fat people. If you want to speed up or slow down your clip, you must strap on the Nintedit Power Belt, which is loaded with motion sensors and electric shocks, and you must run for 1 mile in order to slow your clip down by 10%, 2 miles for 20% reduced speed, and so forth. Do you want slow-motion action scenes in your video? Then you better get outside and start losing 40 lbs!”

Cruisin’ Volume Racer USA:

“In order to change the volume levels of your dialog and music for each of your video clips, you take the Nintedit Super Kart Meter Measuring Device and wire it to the engine of your car. If you are a woman, you may need the help of a mechanic (women in audience start booing). I KID, I KID! (winks, men in audience laugh) We use one of our most powerful motion sensors we have for this mini-game. You type in the Kart Meter how long your clip is going to be, and it gives you a countdown to begin driving. Our groundbreaking motion sensors will detect when you are accelerating and when you are hitting the breaks. The faster you go, THE LOUDER THE VIDEO WILL BE! And vice versa. Experiment by hitting the brakes and speeding up at random on the highway to see the cool effects it will have on your audio! Race against your friends, see who can get the loudest clip! I can’t stress enough, though, if you are a small child, please do not play Cruisin’ Volume Racer USA without the help of a parent, or slightly older child.”

Nintedit Dating:

“We here in Japan have a plethora of video game dating simulators. They are good and all, some are pretty erotic, but we here at Nintendo wanted to give you, the Ninteditor, the most realistic dating experience ever known to a home console system. Basically, you put in a motion sensor chip into your brain, which can be implanted by a Nintendo-trained doctor through either ear canal, and then you go on an actual date with a woman or a man. At the time we are only offering heterosexual encounters, as our computers are having difficulty measuring motion sensors amongst same sex relationships… If you can’t get a date, Nintendo will provide you with a Nintendate for a small fee. No promises they will be attractive, though (laughs). The motion sensors measure how good you are doing on your date by your brain activity, and how much you are nervously shaking. It also has speech recognition to determine if you are saying the right thing. The better you do, the better the special effects graphics will be in your video! Let’s just say if you do REALLY good (winks, starts making subtle humping motions while quietly chuckling) your video will look like Avatar! And if you strike out, your video will look as pathetic as your Friday night. So when you see your friend with a terrible looking video, you’ll know his date with Megumi last weekend didn’t go so hot! (laughs) (audience laughs)”

Well I don’t know, I’m actually kind of sold on this. This seems like it might actually be a really cool and innovative way of editing. I’m excited, I’m definitely going to wait overnight at Target again to get this on launch day!

Oh, here is Miyamoto with his final thoughts:

“Video editing is no longer for the technical. It never was supposed to be. Do you know where the best, most creative ideas come from? They come from your 5-year-old sister. They come from your 95-year-old grandmother. THESE are the people that should be editing. Nintendo wants to take editing out of the hands of the people who have loyally devoted themselves to it for decades, and put it in the hands OF EVERYONE ELSE (audience cheers). Edit with your family. Edit with your friends. Edit with your dog. Edit passionately with your lover. Editing is a universal experience. Just look at this video that my 8-year-old daughter Nintedited about her summer at Nintendo Work Camp B, in a mere 17 hours of playing time.

And this power can now be in the hands of everybody, and anybody, and they can do it with ease. For only $699. Sayonara…” (audience starts rioting uncontrollably, 39 dead, 102 injured).

With so many software programs and hardware only supported by the Intel based Mac computers, you might find that having that old Dual/Quad G5 around is becoming more and more problematic. And that may be true, especially as a production machine. More and more of the Apple and Adobe apps only support the newer processor, so upgrading starts to become difficult. Even Snow Leopard is only supported by Intel machines, so your G5 kind of gets stuck in time.

But I’m going to give you a few options to still make use of that older machine, and it will end up having more value to you than the few bucks you can fetch by selling it on eBay. Currently a Quad G5 (the last and fastest G5 made) is going for about $600, and that’s if you throw in a bunch of extra software/upgrades. And who wants to deal with shipping the beast anyway. My vote would be to keep the machine around and put it to work.

FileServer

One of the best things you can do is add more storage to the machine and have it as a file server. For example, in our office we have 3 main edit rooms, but there are many files that we use on jobs that are shared. We have a music library, stock footage, stock effects, some Editor Toolkit graphics, SFX, Custom Compressor Settings and many template items that we’ve created in house. We used to have all of these items installed on every computer in the office. Not a big deal, except when you make an update you have to make sure that every machine is updated with the same items or you quickly get out of sync. Having just one place to store it all is much more manageable.

Backup Server

Another option would be to add extra storage and make it a backup server that monitors the computers in your office and backups new files on a daily or weekly basis. You can do this using the new Retrospect 8 for the mac, or ChronoSync and Chrono Agent. Both packages work the same way, having a small client app running on your workstation, and the server software running on the backup machine. You select what you want to backup, when you want to back it up and where to. The nice part is that once it’s setup properly, you don’t have to keep remembering to back things up before you leave every night.

WIKI Server

Finally, you can install OSX Server (10.5) software and use it for workgroup management, contact files, file server and even a WIKI. We have a WIKI that we use for ECU (Edit Creations University) where we have all training materials, tips and tricks, job specific information, client FedEx numbers and even the employee manual. It’s all accessible to all employees whenever they need to reference anything, and any employee that has permission can add their own posts or revise posts that are there with new information. It becomes a very centralized location to store information, files, and video tutorials.

Creative Samples Database

Over the past 10 years I have slowly collected still images, QuickTime movies, DVD’s,  tv commercials, show opens, movie trailers and so on, of things that I found inspirational or creative. The main reason was that I wanted to have something to spark my creative juices when I was just dead in the water looking for a new idea. I don’t like to steal an idea directly, but there’s plenty you can take from any given example and than make it your own. Often just seeing something will spark an idea of your own.

I have so many samples now that I created a database called Creative Spark. Everything is processed into a friendly format and imported into the database. Once in there, it’s tagged for any number of attributes, from the type of video it is to what types of things is shows examples of (camera work, effects, text, graphics, etc.). This is the kind of thing that works great in a shared environment and it’s now accessible to any of the editors or producers in the office.

It also comes in handy when you’re trying to describe an effect or look to a client. It’s much more effective if you actually have the example right there to play for them.

TimeMachine Volume

Most people hook up an external drive for use with Apple’s TimeMachine. But by adding up to 6TB of internal space, you can do the same thing and take up no extra counter space. We have a TimeMachine volume on each edit computer that runs twice daily* to backup the active projects (and only the active projects). We’ve found this to be a very solid part of our overall backup strategy.

Whatever you decide to do with that G5, more storage is probably going to help. Today’s post will walk you through how to install more storage than you ever imagined in your aging G5 so that it’s up to snuff for you’re data needs.  Of the ideas I outlined above, all could be implemented on a single machine and play nicely, and in that case you would absolutely want to add more storage.

What You Will Need

A G5 Tower of any vintage (the photos here are from a Quad G5).

A Swift Data Kit for your model of G5. The kit includes…

Internal SATA card (you can purchase this with the kit as an add on option)

Up to 3 extra SATA drives (in addition to the 2 that your G5 normally holds)

One (1) open PCI, PCIX or PCI Express slot

Getting Started

Start by laying all of your parts out and making sure you have everything. I say this not only because it’s a good idea, but because I didn’t do this the first time and didn’t realize I was missing the SATA card until the machine was already stripped down. I was pretty bummed. TAKE 2!

Lay the mac on it’s side and take the side door off of your mac and remove the side cover and clear plastic internal cover.

Next, remove the fan assembly toward the front of the machine. It should just pull straight up.

Once the fan is out you will see a small metal screw in the near center of the bottom plate. This screw needs to be removed. Don’t worry, it’s not really holding anything in that you need to worry about.

Set the screw aside for now.

Next, it’s time to attach the brackets to your hard drives. In our case we went with 1TB Green Drives from Western Digital, but you can use larger 1.5 or 2TB drives if you wish.

The green drives are preferred for their lower power use, and it should be noted that Seagate drives are not supported, and I’ve personally had issues with Hitachi drives. To be safe, stick with WD greens. In my case I couldn’t get the computer to boot because the Hitachi drives were drawing too much power. With the WD drives this was not a issue.

Pay attention to how you connect the bracket. Your instinct may be to put the bracket on so that the bottom lip curls under the drive. However, the drive needs to curl away from the drive.

Repeat these steps until all 3 drives are brackets securely attached.

With all 3 drives mounted to brackets, it’s time to attach each of the drives to the base mount. As shown in the photos, attach each drive to the base using the supplied screws from the kit. It’s important that the drives are oriented as shown.

It seems like an odd way to mount the drives, but it’s actually very solid and the parts are well machined.

Next it’s time to insert the SATA card. We chose the Tempo Sata E4i which is recommend for our G5 model.

Take the card out of the packaging and attach the bight red cables to each of the ports. Be sure to plug the FLAT ends of the cables into the card, not the L shaped ones.

With all of the cables attached, gently insert the card into your open slot and secure it with a screw into the back of the machine.

Just leave the cables hanging out of the side of the box for now.

Next you need to hook up the power cable harness. At one in there is a Y type adaptor. What you need to do is pull the power from one of the current machine drives, and plug that power into one end of the Y adaptor. The other end of the Y adaptor goes back into that drive and you route the cable down the back of the machine. It’s basically a way to split off the power supply and share it with the drives you’re adding.

Again, leave the power cable hanging out the side of the box, but only after routing it down below the top shelf of the machine.

Now the fun part. It’s time to slide the drive assembly in. With the drive assembly right next to the computer, work from back to front hooking up both the power and SATA connections. Don’t worry about the cables being a mess, we’ll fix that later.

With everything hooked up, slowly and carefully slide the drives into the machine as shown, with the lip/screw hole part of the base facing the back of the machine.

Once you get the drives part way in, start to route the cables up and above the fan assembly and above where the cards go.

Once you have the drives in the machine, push the assembly toward the front and line up the plate so that the screw holes are aligned. Once aligned, use the longer screw that came with your kit and secure the plate to the base of the machine.

Reinset the fan assembly, close up the case and you’re good to go!

It’s snug, but it’s a perfect fit.

Time to Power Up

With a little luck, if you did everything correctly and used the recommended drives the machine will power up. Let the machine boot and use Disk Utilites to format the new drives however you would like. They can be added as 3 separate drives if you prefer, or you can raid them together. We created a raid 0 strip of the 3 to add a single 3TB volume.

If the machine turns on and off right away, chances are the power supply is overloaded. Make sure you used the correct drives. In some cases, you can try a few times in a row and it will finally start, but then you’re living on the edge a bit. Try to disconnect the power from one of the drives and see if it will start up then. If so, you may need to stick with only a 2-drive upgrade.

Why Is There An Airplane In My Room?!

Now that you’ve done all of this, there is one little down side that we noticed. Aside from it obviously sucking more power to drive all of the new storage, the fans in the machine run a LOT more. If you have this computer in a back room as a server this might not matter, but if it’s your main edit machine it might start to annoy you. We did this upgrade on 2 machines, one is a server in the back room with a bunch of other equipment, and one was to a Quad G5 that we still edit on (the upgrade shown in this example), so that we could do local TimeMachine backups once daily. The edit machine fans are audibly running a lot more and a lot louder than before. This is no real surprise when you think about all of the extra heat that’s being generated, but you should be aware of it.

Otherwise, it’s a very sold upgrade. We didn’t do any official benchmarks on the drives but the speed is much faster than any single internal drive, and more than adequate for a TimeMachine volume, file server or even video capture for all but the most high end formats.

The SuiteTake

Before you get rid of that old G5 tower, ask yourself if there’s anyway it can make your life easier by automating something for you, acting as a server or just being a internal FTP or file server. There are many tasks that don’t really need Quad-Octo-Pecto-IntelAMD-SuperHyper-Threading chips, and will run just fine on a G5. The value that can be provided by keeping the machine can far exceed any small amount of cash you might get from selling it on eBay.

What’s this? Production gear reviews on a post-production blog? Yup, that’s right. We’re not all just codecs and compression here at SuiteTake; we do actually put on our shoes and socks and get to shoot too. In fact, there’s nothing better to appreciate parking your rear in a comfy edit chair all day long then luggin’ production gear around on an old fashioned shoot now and then.

So yes, we do shoot here too and have come across a few nifty little production gadgets that have proved very helpful in the field: The Lite Panels Micro Pro and Chimera’s Color Correction Screens for their softboxes.

Lite Panels Micro Pro Review

First the Lite Panel Micro Pro. We had a shoot come up where we were going to need to shoot close ups of a persons foot walking across a floor in a day-for-night situation. Looking at our standard Arri lighting kit there was nothing in there that would really do the trick for casting the small pool of light we would need to illuminate the foot as it walked across the floor. All of our instruments were just too big for the task, the smallest of our lights being a 300. We looked and found the Lite Panels Micro Pro and thought it would be the perfect fit.

The Lite Panel Micro Pro in its box

First, the construction. The Lite Panel Micro Pro right out of the box feels cheep, and at around $450 from B&H, it isn’t exactly cheep. The body is all plastic, but the not the good solid and refined plastic that you’d find in a Toyota or on an iPod, the cheep brittle plastic more akin to a carnival toy. It has 96 LEDs in a grid, is powered by 6 AAs or DC in (power source sold separately, but certainly something you could get at Radio Shack), has a power control dimming knob on top and standard screw-in shoe mount on the bottom. In the box is the Micro Pro, a flimsy shoe mount with ball head a CTO filter, warming filter, and diffusion filter.

The Lite Panel Micro Pro

While the Lite Panel Micro Pro feels and looks cheep in performance it is not, it has held up well to our production demands so far (which are rather light by comparison to more rigorous demands). I suspect that a drop or good whack to a c-stand could crack the casing, however, it should be noted that an LED won’t be damaged by an impact in the same way a tungsten bulb would. The shoe mount is the real weak link in the kit. It is flimsy and poorly made. When  you tighten down the stop on the ball head it causes the positioning of the panel to change significantly due to the pressure applied to the ball and socket making it futile to position the panel and then lock it down. What I have ended up doing is to tighten down the ball head to a mid-range of tightness and then just force adjust the panel to where I want it.

The included shoe mount plain sucks

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is balanced for daylight out of the box and the filters it comes with do a fine job of correcting to incandescent. They fit onto the front of the panel via slots on either side of the casing and hold in place well. There are also slots on the back of the panel to hold the filters when not in use, although our particular unit’s rear slots are too narrowly spaced to accommodate the filters so they are bowed when placed there. Not a big deal because they do stay put but it is annoying enough to me that I usually don’t keep them there. Battery life is excellent and the Lite Panel Micro Pro simply does not heat up one bit.

The rear of the Micro Pro

We were attracted to the Lite Panel because we thought it would be able to cast an even pool of light without the usual hot spots associated with traditional on-camera lights. In performance the Lite Panel Micro Pro was capable of both. The best thing about it is the adjustable power knob on the top of the unit. There are no stops, marks, or clicks in the knob, it’s just a smooth pot all around with a solid click to turn completely off. I like this because you can dial the intensity of the light to a virtually unlimited range. And that is really how this light needs to be used.

The power knob

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is not a key light. It should not be used as a main source of light in just about any situation. If you buy this light to act as a main source of light for quick head shots or interviews you’ll likely be disappointed. Rather it excels at being that little extra, that little kicker you need to add a little splash to the details of your scene. In our case we need a little punch down on the floor and it did an excellent job at that. I’ve found that I always use the panel at about 50-65% of its max power and have never used it at full power. When potted up to full power it just becomes a big raunchy hot spot like any other on-camera light. The key to using the Lite Panel Micro Pro is to pot it to 50-65% just to add a little bit of punch or kick to your scene, and we love it for that. We have found a use for it in just about every setup we’ve done.

The standard screw mount on the ball head adapter

It should be noted that while the shoe mount adapter is a piece of garbage it does have a standard tripod screw threading on the bottom of it so it can be directly attached to a photo ball head tripod or other light stand with a screw mount and used as an off-camera light. We do this all the time. Like I’ve said, the Lite Panel Micro Pro is a great little kicker, it’s NOT a key light. It’s small size allow it to be placed in tight spots where traditional fresnels won’t fit, and lack of heat make it safe in those small spaces as well. Yes, we are disappointed in the chincy construction but we absolutely love our Lite Panel Micro Pro.

A 3-way comparison of the Lite Panel's illumination

Chimera Color Correction Screen Review

Another cool little toy we have in our kit is a color correction screen for our Chimera soft box. Chimera makes several different flavors of color correction screens for their popular softboxes. They make 1/8, 1/4. 1/2, 3/4, and full versions of CTB and CTO for all sizes of their softboxes.

We had a shoot where we were going to need to shoot indoors with significant amounts of daylight coming through windows. Geling the windows with CTO wasn’t an option with the time and budget we had, neither was renting an HMI kit. I got to thinking that there had to be something out there to color correct Chimeras. In the past we had C-47′d CTB to the inside of our Chimera in a pinch and ended up getting marginal results and melted gels. I went looking and quickly found Chimera’s offerings. We got a 1/2 blue CTB color correction screen for our softbox.

The Chimera Color Correction Screen

The construction is excellent Chimera quality. To my surprise though, the screen is little more than a regular white front Chimera diffuser cloth with a regular CTB gel sewn to the back with velcro all around to attach it. The CTB is an actual gel! Because of this I do take a little extra care of it not to crinkle it too much and remove it when packing it away for the day. I roll it up and keep it in it’s original product box.

The light quality from it is great. It’s exactly what you’d expect from precisely positioning a CTB gel at the front of your softbox. Also as expected it does cut down the amount of light output according to the thickness of gel you are using. To compensate we sometimes remove the inner baffle from the softbox. We always remove the standard white diffuser from the front of our Chimera before attaching the color correction screen but I suppose if you wanted that extra diffusion and didn’t need the extra light output you could leave it on, there is room on the softbox’s velcro strip to accommodate both.

The front and back of the screen

We’ve used our screen in many mixed light situations (that’s primarily why we went with a 1/2 blue instead of a full blue) and it makes for a healthy white balance. It has proven to be indispensable when shooting in rooms with lots of windows. With a tool like this you can actually leave the blinds open and use that available light for a change!

The SuiteTake

The Lite Panel Micro Pro is an awesome little kicker light that has proved it worth many times over in a wide variety of shooting situations. It’s construction is sub-par and shoe mount is utter garbage but gives a great even splash of light quickly and easily right where you need it. The Lite Panel Micro Pro is very useful both on a off the camera. At almost $450 it’s priced a little on the high side, but you’ll be amazed at how often you’re able to use it in the field or the studio.

Chimera Color Correction Screens are great “poor-man’s” HMIs. At about $40 bucks a pop for the mid range sizes they are within just about anyone’s budget. With one of these slick screens say goodbye to the days of pulling all the shades and hello to using available light indoors again.

And yes, we do get off our butts now and then and do a little shooting here at SutieTake!

Having regular backups is important enough (that’s for another day, another post) but how about starting with a quality drive system? I’ve seen too many people buy drives for their edit systems based on price and price alone, only to be burned and burned bad. It’s like shopping around for a heart surgeon and going with the cheapest guy.

“Hi everybody!” “Hi Dr. Nick!”

I was told a story about an editor that was working on a big show for the Discovery channel for over 3 months, and 5 days before he was to master the show his drive system went down and all was lost. Every bit. There was no way to recover 3 months of work in time to make the broadcast date so they not only lost the job and all future work from Discovery, but 3 months of revenue that they had already worked for. Just pause and think about that. That’s the kind of thing that some companies can never recover from.

At Edit Creations we have a job that we do every year that lasts from January through the end of June (2 rooms, 5 days a week), creating multiple videos and various programs that all play at a show in July. Whenever we start to come down that home stretch I remember that story and start to get a bit nervous. I’m always making sure that our backups are in good shape.

This post is all about making sure the drives you buy are worthy of the work that you’re doing. Or more importanly, that you avoid the drives that are not.

Before I start, let me break it down a bit more. There are hard drive manufactures that create the raw hard drives (like Hatachi, Seagate and Maxtor to name a few) and then there are the companies that take those hard drives and create products that incorporate them. I will be discussing is the second group.

I have always been somebody that gravitates to people and companies that take pride in what they do. Having a passion for whatever you do means that you’ll turn out something better then the guy who looks at something as “just a job” or “just a way to make a buck”. There are companies like Apple and Jet Blue that provide quality products and service, because they take pride in what they do and what they put out there. They may not always be perfect or make the right decisions, but they do their best to right their wrongs. It’s evident from the moment you pick up a MBP and feel it in your hands. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, and you can’t deny that, even if you are a lover of the PC. The same with Jet Blue. Take a flight with them and it’s very clear that they’re all about making your experience with them second to none.

The two companies I’m going to outline here do not fit this model in my opinion, and I have plenty of personal experience to back it up in both cases.

Offender #1 – Lacie
Products – Any of the “Quadra” drives

Back in 2003-2004 I invested in some of the then popular Lacie drives (they were just called Lacie drives, no quadra model name back then). The drives seemed nice on the surface. They came in multiple capacities, they were FW400, and later 800, the enclosures were a nice solid metal and if you were to hold one in your hand it felt nice and solid.

I started buying them when I noticed other editors were using them, and even started to see them during product demos and I figured if they were using them they must be good. I started to recommend them to my clients as well. I should have done my research though.

Over the next 2 years I purchased more and more drives, and eventually ended up with around 12 of them of varying sizes. Some with single drives, some with dual and one with 4 drives in a single case.

Over the next few years I started having a few issues. First, some of the dual drive systems would literally unmount themselves while editing. Our usual setup was to have one of them for the video drive and one for the project files (we were only doing DV25/DV50 at the time), and while you were editing one would just drop off from time to time. All of the media would suddenly go “off line” and we usually had to reboot to get it all working again.

The drives had their own dedicated FW800 card so they were not on the internal bus system, and thus there was no other overhead, just 2 drives hooked into a 3-port FW800 card.

Then we noticed that when doing long copies from one drive to the next (cloning a drive) we would be hard pressed to get it to finish. The drive would at some point stop copying the data, and the blue light on the front would just flash on and off while emitted a steady and slow tapping sound.

The final clincher was when the drives would just fail. The internal HD’s just started to crap out and we actually lost data (however we did have backups of everything). A quick search on google turned out tons of people having the same issue. The general consensus was that the drives were overheating. The drives are very tightly packed into an enclosure that has no fans and no air flow, thus no real way to drop the temperature aside from it transferring the heat through the metal case. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.

At the Chicago Final Cut Pro User Group I started talking to people and found out other editors had had the same problem. In one case a drive was only 6 weeks old when it died, and the editor lost all of the captured footage. I also had one client call me in a panic because I had previously recommended that he buy Lacie for his backup drive, but his drive was dead (in his case the power supply blew so we were able to save the data by taking the enclosure apart and putting the drive in a new case).

I happened to be going to NAB that year (2006) so I went right up to the Lacie booth and told them some of my stories, told them how it was all over the web and asked what they were doing to address it. Mind you, I did this in a very professional manner, since at that point I still assumed it was a problem they were working on. His reply was that “As far as we know there is no problem, so there are no plans to make any changes”. There was no interest in getting additional information from me or looking into the issue any further.

So there they were at NAB, selling drives to media professionals who make their living on keeping their data safe, pushing a product with a higher then normal failure rate.

At that point I made the decision to get all of our drives replaced regardless of cost. When I got back from NAB we listed all of our LaCie drives on eBay (the working ones anyway) and bought brand new G-Raid drives to replace them – but only after doing several weeks of research. That was probably one of the smartest business decisions I made that year. Suddenly we didn’t have any of the issues we had before, the drives generally ran faster and there were no more heat issues. Zero problems, even now. We have since moved up from the G-Raid drives to getting 2 G-SpeedXL Fibre Raids, and those too work flawlessly. The older G-Raid drives are used for travel jobs and a few are on our internal backup server running 24/7.

The difference in my opinion is that the people at G-Technology (now owned by Hatachi) only put out the best products they can. They test their drives rigorously and guarantee the number of streams you can get in real time while editing.

I remember before I decided to go with them I called their office and asked to speak to an engineer (not a sales guy). I explained my situation, told him the other vendors I was considering and asked him why I should choose their drives over the others. Their drives were more expensive then the other ones I was looking at.

He explained to me that they are constantly testing the different hard drives that they put into the units because not all drives are equal, and that from their testing the only drives that consistently lived up to their performance benchmarks were Hatachi drives (at that time there were not part of Hitachi so they could use any drives at all). He said that while they were more expensive drives, they wanted to be sure what they sent out reached the standards they had set, and that other vendors could just take whatever drives they could get the best deal on that month and toss them in.

He also mentioned how they were big on keeping the drives cool so that they would last. For me he pushed all of the right buttons, and I bought 2 drives right over the phone for testing, and later purchased several more.

One more note about Lacie. Not that long ago I ran into a past employee of Lacie. As soon as I realized he used to work there I asked him about the heat/drive failure issue. He admitted that they were aware of it, and that internally there were people who wanted to address the problem, but that it was ultimately ignored by the higher ups. He said that one of the reasons he ultimately left had to do with quality issues that he felt were not getting addressed.

To be fair, Lacie does make other drives and some are probably very good. I have one of their rugged mini drives and I do like it. It’s well made and is priced right. I don’t use the drive for mission critical tasks so I felt OK giving it a try. But in general, a company that does not respond to their customers complaints is not a company I want to do business with.

Offender #2 – Granite Digital
Products – Swappable Drive Bays

As I’ve mentioned in some previous posts about archiving, up until the last year or so we’ve used a system of hard drives as our long term archive. We used a removable drive system and trays that allowed us to buy off the shelf IDE (now SATA) drives and backup entire projects with ease. We would then keep a catalog of every drive (using a great program called CD Finder. Don’t let the name fool you it does a lot more then CD’s. We still use it to keep track of our LTO tapes.) so that pulling things up later would be quick and easy. It was cost effective, efficient, and at least for a time it worked out great. Until we started to pull things off the drives.

We had purchased 3 FireVue drives from a company called Granite Digital and the products were a bit disappointing right from the beginning. Again, I didn’t do the research that I should have.

To make a very long story short, what we realized as time went on was that the drives had some sort of error transferring data and would, on occasion, prevent files from properly backing up or in some cases they were backed up fine but would not restore. Files would be too corrupt to open at all, or in the case of QT files there would be both audio in video “digital hits” that made the movies useless. We started using ChrnoSync to try to retrieve files from the drives without any errors using the “verify” option, but what we ended up with was a list of errors, which confirmed the problem. If we repeatedly tried to get the files we could get some of them successfully, but there were some that just wouldn’t transfer and were lost.

Sample QT Movie

To their credit tech support was very helpful, at least to the point of telling us all of the things on our end it might be. From OS problems, cables, software and on and on. We have 3 different units on 3 different machines and they all had the same exact issue, but somehow they were able to say with absolute confidence, that the problem could not be their drives. This is a quote from one of my exchanges from tech support.

“I can appreciate your concerns but would have to totally disagree as to the reliability of our hardware. That’s not to say you don’t have a bad component that could create problems but rather to say our stuff works as good if not better than most.”

Well, I disagreed then and still do.

Companies that take a defensive attitude when confronted with potential problems are doomed to fail. Nobody is perfect and no company is perfect. Most people know and accept this, but then it all comes down to how the company responds to mistakes. In this case every solution offered had to do with my system being flawed, which in the end it was not.

Their tech support finally wore me down and I stopped asking for their help. I sometimes wonder if that’s part of the plan.

We are currently in the progress of migrating all of our drives to LTO tapes using the Series-A Backup Drive from Cache~A. The only way we can even get some of that data off the old hard drives is to remove the drives from the trays and create a direct connection with a IDE to USB adaptor. Then it all comes off smoothly.

On top of this issue, one of their rack mountable units was $600 and when I received it it was made of very cheap bendable metal (it felt like it was cut out of a single piece of tin and bent into a case using pliers), it didn’t fit right in the rack, no cables were included and on the back was a single FW port, meaning you couldn’t even loop anything else off of it. Except for the smallest portable devices where space is an issue this is unacceptable in my book.

I emailed the company and never received a reply, but instead received a package a few weeks later with a cable and a new back plate to replace the one built into the unit. OK, not bad – but why wasn’t it right in the first place?

The SuiteTake

I’ve singled out 2 companies that I’ve had bad experiences with. The good news is there are a lot more good then bad companies out there.

I would suggest you deal with companies that specialize in creating drives for media professionals, and have a good, accessible tech support staff. Don’t be afraid to call them on the phone and ask the hard questions before you buy. When you’re having trouble nothing beats being able to pick up the phone and get immediate help. This has been my experience with G-Technology and AJA specifically. Two companies with first rate tech support and really great people.

Remember, if you’re a media professional the hard drives you use are the fort knox of your data. Everything that you do comes down to those files be safe and accessible on your hard drive. This is no place to cheap out, and a little extra money spent here can go a long way towards avoiding much more costly disasters.

We looked at all the options out there in the sub 10K price range, and after weeks of research ended up with a Sony EX-1. That really surprised me because when we started the search I was pretty much set on the Panasonic P2 format and the AG-HVX200A model. Not only do I have experience with that camera, but almost everything else we do is shot in the DVCPro HD format, so we have a nice workflow in place. More then that though, I can’t stand editing in the MPEG-2 format. It’s fine for shooting and can capture great images, but once you get it into the edit system you can be assured you will rendering more then ever before. But in the end, the Sony EX-1 won hands down in image quality, built in features, and price. There was just no denying it.

So, what to do with the workflow?

On the first several projects we tried multiple different ways of attacking the projects. Everything from working in the MPEG-2 format natively to converting everything to ProRes and editing with the converted files instead. We also have extensive experience working with the Sony software, which includes XDCam EX Clip Browser and XDCam Transfer.

In addition to all of this trial and error, I was training a client on how to handle the workflow for his own project (he was renting our camera). But it seemed every time I met with him I was saying “OK, I know I said do it like this, but now there’s a whole new way to do it”. Nothing like learning on the job to keep everybody on edge!

So here we are now, about 6 months later, with what I believe is a solid workflow. So if you’re using EX-1 (or XDCam footage of any kind) you can learn from our mistakes and start off on the right foot.

In The Field

If you’re new to using a tapeless format, it can be very unnerving to spend an entire day shooting and have no tape to show for. To avoid disaster, redundancy is the key.

A simple but important note – label your media cards!!! Use a sharpie or a nice printed label, but make sure each card has a unique name/number. This will avoid confusion in the field when you drop your cards into a pile of other cards and don’t know which ones have footage to download and which are empty. Seriously, this one little step can save you in the field.

Assuming you don’t have enough SxS cards to make it through an entire day of shooting, you’re going to have to offload the cards and erase them in the field so that they can be reused (see, you’re already freaking out). Here’s how we handle that task.

In addition to the producer, camera person and possible audio guy, it’s ideal to have a AP or junior tech person with you. The handling of the media cards is very important, and getting it wrong can be disastrous. Don’t underestimate how important this is, just because it’s easy. We call this person the Media Assistant (MA from here forward).

The MA has the job of offloading all cards in the field, checking to be sure files were successfully transferred, and then erasing the clips from the card so the card can be reused. The equipment used for this is a MacBook Pro and two portable FireWire or USB drives. You can do the same thing using the PC but we’re all Mac here so I’m unable to provide any details on that side of things.

As each card is filled by the cameraperson, it’s passed off to the MA. The MA will then load it into the Express 34 slot on the MBP and it will mount on the desktop as an external drive (make sure you have the proper drive installed on this machine so that the card will mount on the desktop properly). Then, using a program called Shotput EXPress, the media is copied, simultaneously, to two different external drives (you can do up to 3 different locations. While you can do this manually in the finder as well, Shotput EXPress makes it more automated and does a nice data verification as it copies everything over. It just adds another layer of security.

Once the media has been copied, Sony’s XDCam EX Clip Browser software is used to view the clips on the drives and verify that everything looks and sounds as it should. At this point we’re just spot checking a random sampling of clips. Once the MA is satisfied, the inserted SxS card is erased by selecting all clips and hitting the delete key (this is also done using the Clip Browser software). The card is then given back to the producer or camera person for use again.

Once the shoot is over and the producer is back at the office, the footage is all copied to 2 different full size (and less expensive) drives. One is used during the production of the project by the producers and editors, and the other is a backup, and is stored with the client. It’s essentially equivalent to the box of beta tapes the client would have received in the past. After the media is successfully copied to the larger drives, the mini-drives are erased and ready for the next shoot.

As a side note, don’t cheap out on your hard drives, especially the big ones that are the final destination for your camera originals. A good drive does not cost that much more then a cheap one. Just ask yourself how much your shot day is worth, and if you would be willing to pay to reshoot everything. I highly recommend buying drives from G-Technology. While they’re not the cheapest, they are backed up with the best warranty in the business, they run quite and most of all, cool. On the flip side, STAY AWAY FROM LACIE DRIVES! I can’t tell you the number of editors and clients who have horror stories about drive failures, myself included. We used to have a ton of them but sold them all on eBay just to avoid any additional disaster.

Preparing for the Edit

While the free Sony tools can be used to screen and prep for editing, we have opted to go the route of having a FCP work station for the producer. After doing it both ways, we feel this is the most efficient for both the producer and the editor. (We’re currently looking into setting up a FCP Server workstation to streamline this process even more).

At this point loading, logging and transferring footage is the same is using P2 footage. Using the Sony FCP Logging plugin outlined in a previous SuiteTake post, the footage is loaded into the Log & Transfer window and clips are marked and labeled. As each clip is identified, it’s added to the import cue and converted to QT movies that FCP can edit with. The files you end up are basically MPEG-2 files wrapped into a .mov file. (For faster logging, check out our post on log and capture shortcuts.)

While going through this process, the producer can import multiple clips from a single recorded clip, add clip names and log notes, and organize footage into multiple bins as desired. This is all typically done to a drive designated as the “project drive”, so what you end up with is a single drive that has the FCP logging project with all of the bins and clips, and all of the transferred and transcoded media. This is what is handed off to the editor at the start of the edit.

Once the editor receives the drive, the project file that the producer created is opened, and all bins/clips are copied and pasted into the current working project (or the template project if we’re starting one from scratch). The project the producer creates is treated as a log project only, we do not edit inside that project.

With the new bins/clips pasted into the working project, we then use media manager to move all of the logged footage to our local edit drives and re-link them. We never work off of client drives, and instead opt to always have the footage on our own system. Since we have dedicated raid systems on each edit system, it’s a lot faster and it’s easier to keep things organized on our end. Once everything is copied over and re-linked we eject the drive and give it back to the producer.

Editing

So the main drawback to editing with the XDCam/EX-1 footage is that it’s saved in the MPEG-2 format. Because it’s a long GOP format, there’s not actually a full frame of video for each recorded frame of video. So when editing, FCP has to recreate those missing frames. While on the fly editing it’s usually seamless, the moment you add a transition or anything else that requires editing FCP has to create these new frames (FCP Calls this “Conforming MPEG-2 Video”), and THEN render. It adds a whole new layer of processing and even on a fast machine it’s a slow process.

So, what to do? There are three basic options.

Transcode to ProRes
While logging and importing footage inside of the FCP Log & Transfer window, you don’t have the option to transcode the footage into any other format. However, once that the footage has been imported and wrapped into QT files, you do have the option to convert everything to ProRes using compressor. What you’ll end up with are iFrame based video files that look as good as the original, but are more “edit friendly”. You’ll be able to edit quickly in a ProRes sequence with minimal rendering, and be able to do compositing without watching the image degrade right in front of your eyes. The drawback is you’re adding another step to your process, and depending on the amount of footage you have and the speed of your machine, it can be a very timely step.

Edit Natively in the XDCam EX MPEG-2 Format
For some very simple and short projects, this is actually a good option. Just drag your first shot into the timeline and let FCP match the timeline to your raw footage, and everything will play and edit in real time and you’ll be pretty happy with how it all comes together. But there’s one trick to make it go smoothly.

After you’ve let FCP match the sequence settings to you footage, open up the settings for your sequence and go to the “Render Control” tab. Make sure all rendering is done to ProRes instead of Same as Sequence. This way whenever you do need to render it will take less time and you won’t be compressing back into the MPEG-2 format. This essentially removes the conforming step that FCP would otherwise need to perform, at least while editing.

Exporting your final sequence will go slower then you might be used to, but it’s usually tolerable unless your project is very complex with lots of effects/render files. Because you’re exporting back into the XDCam EX format, it has to convert everything back into the Long GOP MPEG-2 format, which is very slow even on a fast machine.

Edit in a ProRes Timeline
You can also setup your timeline as a ProRes timeline for whatever frame size/frame rate matches your source footage. Once you do this, you can edit with your footage and for the most part play it back in real time (except for some effects) with FCP’s RT timeline. The advantage to working in this way is that since you’re working in the ProRes codec, your footage will continue to look great even if you throw lots of layers, graphics and effects at your project.

The huge down side to this is everything, and I mean EVERY-THING must be rendered at one point or another. Even if you’re able to play things back in real time while you’re editing using the RT features of FCP, when it comes time to print to tape or export a master QT file, you will have to render everything and it can take a very long time, even on shorter projects. You will end up with a very nice, high quality ProRes master file, but if you’re on a tight deadline this might not the way to go.

The Best Way?
After trying all of the above approaches on multiple projects, I don’t think this is a single solution that fits every project. I think before starting each project the best thing to do is look at the details of that project and decide. For simple projects that are short, mostly cuts and dissolves, few graphics and no real layers, staying in the MPEG-2 format is by far the fastest way to go. But if you have a more complicated project with layers, keys, graphics and so on, I would work in the ProRes world so that the image quality holds up though all of the processing.

At least for the majority of projects we do, transcoding everything to ProRes before we start is not really efficient. It takes too long and just adds an extra step that we just don’t have the time for. So in my opinion the it’s just not worth the time penalty.

The SuiteTake Take?
The EX-1/EX-3 and the higher end XDCam cameras have all proven that you can create some great images and record them to the MPEG-2 format. MPEG-2 cameras have really matured over the years, and they’re far superior to the baby brother HDV format cameras.

But understand that if you go this route there are tradeoffs when you get to the postproduction stage. The tradeoffs are not nearly as bad as they used to be and there are now multiple ways to handle the challenges – but they are still tradeoffs.

When starting any project, you should always consider the entire work flow start to end before shooting your first frame of video. If after doing this the EX-1/EX-3 fit your production needs, I say go for it.

Here at SuiteTake we try to be neat. We try to be clean. You know, it impresses clients when they walk into a nice neat and clean suite instead of a smelly pit of filth. So we vacuum, we take out the garbage filled with empty coffee cups, Chinese food containers, and the occasional empty bottle of Baileys Irish Creme, we wipe down the counters, we scrub the caked up residue of hundreds of lotiony hands turning the various doorknobs. Sure, this makes for a pleasant working environment for us and our clients but what about the real work-horses of the office – the Macs?

A can of compressed air should clean this puppy right up

We have a few MacPro’s here at the office with the ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards. Yes they work great and are blazing fast, but have you ever noticed that they have a tendency to be loud? If you’re a proud owner of a X1900 you are already fondly familiar with its wizzingly loud startup sound as the fan boosts to overdrive during the initial moments of startup.

Observe the X1900 in its natural environment

After running the X1900 for well over a year I began to notice that the X1900′s fan was getting louder and louder. At first its speed would increase slightly, to the point where you could just barely hear it, for only a few seconds then it would settle down to its normal, near silent, state and speed. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I had just upgraded to Leopard and was using its nifty new mosaic-like iPhoto montage screen saver and thought it was just a little GFX power boost that was needed when the screen saver kicked in. As time passed, however, the fan began to get louder and louder more and more often. Its speed would increase dramatically and remain there for longer periods, then, when it would settle down its overall speed was always increased.

This was getting really annoying especially because now I could always hear the fan whirring and wizzing, speeding up and slowing down all day long. I checked software, driver, and firmware updates. I emailed support at Apple and ATI to no avail. I searched and posted forums pleading for an answer or just to find at least one other person with the same problem. Eventually I found what I was looking for. About 27 Google searches in I stumbled across a forum where people were having the same issues and discussing the problem. Some suggested driver updates, others suggested a total re-install of the OS. But way down at the bottom the simplest and easiest solution was offered: clean the damn thing!

The problem is that the X1900′s heat sync is covered by a protective plastic shield with the fan at one end and an opening and air intake at the other. This shield creates a sort-of wind tunnel channeling air flow past the heat sync and out the back of the Mac. Since the heat sync’s slats are bunched so tightly together they collect a blanket of dust on them that in effect blocks off the air flow through the unit hence the increased and variable fan speed. The X1900′s fan has to speed up because it’s not able to pull enough air past it to maintain its optimal temperature.

You can't even see the heat sync below the dust

The solution, simple. Just pull out the card (may or may not be necessary depending on the tools you have) and remove the dust blanket. I pulled mine out so I could photograph it and used a pair of needle-nose pliers to remove the dust taking care not to damage the heat sync during the procedure.

Removing the X1900

Using pliers to remove the dust

Now you can see the heat sync below the dust

It was nice that the dust pulled off kind of like a sheet.

The leftover dust-bunnies

The procedure took only a minute once the card was removed and it left a sparkling and shiny new heat sync.

All shiny and new

Add in a little compressed air to spruce up the rest of the card and it was as good as new.

Reinstalled

I fired up the Mac right after I reinstalled everything and all the fan speed and noise problems were instantly gone and have not come back. The fan now happily spins at its near-silent state and is no longer a nusiance.

If you have a MacPro with the ATI Radeon X1900 and haven’t payed much attention to cleaning it chances are pretty good that your heat sync looks just like ours did. Even if you’re not experiencing any fan speed or noise issues yet, pop open your Mac and pull off the dust blanket. A bit of preventative maintenance never hurt anything.

Ahhh, silent editing...

This is the second of a two part series on the Quantum A-Series LTO drive. You can find part 1 here.

Once Quantum released the unbelievably fantastic Version 3 upgrade three months ago, any minor inconvenience we were having with the tape drive seemed to disappear. They really did a great job listening to client comments and fixed virtually every problem that needed to be addressed. The interface is more fluid (you used to not be able to adjust the size of the windows), and there is no longer a self-destruct button next to the eject button. There is now an automatic preventative measure in place to no longer lose the table of contents (a problem we had early in its use, it appeared worse than it actually was). We can fill the tapes up as full as we want (we used to need to add a cushion of space to prevent filling the tapes “too full”). I can now let my pals < and ? into the drive without concern. Oh, they can invite the rest of their friends as well, the blacklist is lifted! There is still only a 97 character limit for filenames, but only once in a blue moon do I export FCP movies titled…

“Saturday_Conference_With_Rebecca_and_Steve_Morricone_ Featuring_the_Brilliant_Antics _of_Reggie Montgomery_Which_Occurred_at_9AM_Eastern_Time _or_8AM_Central_Time_Which_Would _Make_More_ Sense Because_We_Live_in_Illinois.mov”

The actual process of putting (small named) files on the tape is an easy, 5 step process. It’s so simple that I was able to teach it to my cousin Eric in just a couple of minutes (FYI he sniffs a lot of glue, it’s hard to teach him things).

1. Organize everything you want to put on the tape into a folder, name it appropriately. We use a date coded folder based on the day of the backup.

2. Insert a tape with enough free space to hold your folder.

3. Open the drive’s server interface, and connect to the tape on the right side.

4. Locate your folder on the left hand side (which is the local side).

5. Drag it to the right side.

That’s it. It really is that easy. And that’s one of the best parts about this drive, it’s so incredibly easy. You can then watch the progress in the bottom part of the interface.

And it will let you know when it is done.

Taking things off of a tape is just as easy. Just drag the files from the right side to the left side!

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Hey Scott, I just backed up multiple terabytes on these LTOs, now I need to pull stuff off of them, but how do I know where anything is on these tapes???” Well, my amigo, that answer comes in the form of a sort of mashed together single word, CDFinder. This is a spectacular cataloguing tool that we used back for the IDE drives that still carries over to our tape use. We now have (at the time of this article posting) 46 archive tapes/drives. CDFinder helps us sift through all 46 places that a file could potentially be. The way to put a new tape into the catalog is unbelievably easy.

Just load the tape onto the desktop by going to Go > Connect to Server.

Then open CDFinder, and drag the tape to the left part of the CDFinder interface.

Hit “Create New”. And it will start to catalogue your tape.

This is sort of a buggy process, as the tape drive will claim to disconnect every few minutes or so, but it’s just an illusion, as it will eventually catalogue if you just let it do it’s thing. Then just rename the catalogued tape whatever it is you’d like to call it, as I’m sure you won’t want the sever number as the name of your tape (though, I do plan on naming my child “10.1.10.70 Roberts”. It works for a boy OR a girl!).

Then the process of finding things just requires that you hit “Find”.

Type in what you want to find.

And it will search ALL of your tapes, and find what you seek. This whole process it relatively intuitive, and as stated many times, abnormally simple.

I think I saw this once on a math test in 7th grade...

Now I know no one likes to hear it, but the A-Series isn’t exactly cheap at $8000. But hear us out here! Before we had the tape drive, back in the IDE external drive days, we archived everyone’s projects as a common courtesy. Just for our own well being knowing that projects come back from the dead after a while, that’s just how it goes. But with the longevity of the LTO tapes, backing up our clients projects has now become (in addition to a way to easily access old projects for use in current projects) a way for our clients to have long term storage of their valuable work. So we now charge our clients for each project that they have archived. Pulling things off of the tapes is free to them, but the initial archiving now costs them a small fee. This is a win-win for us and the clients, as they will have their projects safe for several decades, and we will pay off the expense of the drive in the near future, and even start making money on it! It’s an investment!

Sadly, the cashier at Target wouldn't let me buy an Xbox using LTO tapes instead of money.

I guess the underlying point of this was to let you know, if you happened to have doubts about LTO tape based archiving, you were right to perhaps have doubts in the past, but it all seems to be good now. The Quantum A-Series is a fantastic machine for archiving large amounts of media. I recommend the Quantum A-Series tape drive NOW, because it works good NOW. It is definitely faster to actually pull things off of it or put things on it compared to the IDE drives. It also importantly comes with the assurance that bad data blocks won’t get copied over, giving us very comfortable levels of security. I think what we expected it to do when we first got it, is finally happening ten fold in recent times. Bail on the hard drives, this is a good time to be tape based archiving. And you should make it an A-Series.

Our ever growing collection of filled LTO tapes.

In a future article we will look at how we use the LTO drives in combination with tapeless production cameras. Having a good workflow is the key to everything.

For more detailed specs on LTO technology in general, check out Wikipedia.

After a few weeks of email exchanges about backup strategies with the “Ever Handsome” Larry Jordan, he invited me on the Digital Production Buzz to talk about my experience with the Quantum A-Series LTO backup drive. If you don’t normally listen to the show, below is an excerpt of my interview with him. If you would like to become a regular listener, you can subscribe to the show on iTunes. The show airs weekly and you can’t help but learn something new with each new episode. 

Listen to Interview

Archival of editing projects and tapeless camera originals is a hot topic these days, with opinions flying everywhere. Today’s post covers our experiences with both hard drives and the new A-Series LTO drive from Quantum.

In early 2008, we decided to switch to LTO tapes for all of our long term archiving.  We previously used external IDE drives (well, internal drives put in cases to make them external) for our backups.  They work decently for at least a while.  The problem was, it got to the point that we had to use Chronosync, a file synchronizing software, to bring back any element from a project because digital hits would appear in the video files due to bad data blocks copying over from the drives back onto our system.

Chronosync Error. The bane of my existence.

There is a “Verify Copied Data” function in Chronosync that detects any of these digital hits, and causes it to restart the copying until it got it right.  Sometimes it would take fifteen tries just to get it so that it wouldn’t have a hit in it.  It is easily one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever seen.  And you know it never happened 10% into the copy, it always cruelly waited 15 minutes for your 30 GB video to get to 92% before it decided it was going to restart.  And while the Chronosync’s verification worked in ensuring a good file, doing the verify literally slowed the copy speed down a drastic amount.

IDE Hard Drive, in a special case to make it external and loadable in a hard drive reader.

Another eventual downfall of  hard drive based archiving is the longevity of hardware itself.  Hard drives tend to only last a couple years or so.   So if you were hoping 20 years from now that the Johnson project is still on that cob web covered hard drive, you probably won’t be happy to see that your hard drive most likely won’t even turn on.   It takes a little TLC to make sure that hard drives last as long as they possibly can last.   Every month or so, you should connect each hard drive you use and “spin them” in order to keep them fresh.   If you let a hard drive sit dormant for too long, it will just give up on itself.   This can be annoying and time consuming when you have 30 hard drives.  Hard drives crave a lot of attention, just like that one hyper kid in my 8th grade math class who would run up and down the aisles waiving his arms.  But tape based archiving is great because you can just put the tapes on a shelf and ignore them for long periods of time, only using them when you want to.  They are said to last approximately 30 years.  And if you are wondering what you are going to do with the files on your tapes 30 years from now, man, you are thinking way too hard about the distant future.   We will probably have thought-controlled nano-archives implanted in our brains by then.

So, the LTO drive was a perfect upgrade.  It had the power of John Rambo, the speed of Barry Sanders, and the elegance of Jackie Onassis.

Before we go any further, perhaps we should take a moment to go over a brief history of the LTO tape, and discover its mysterious origins.  Unlike most of us humans, the LTO tape was born in a laboratory, in the late 1990s.  It was given the name Linear Tape Open, named after its grandfather Linear Tape Ostrofsky, who fought bravely in The War.  It is a magnetic tape, which was first publicly released in 2000, and was only big enough to hold a measly 100 GB, but it was adorable nonetheless.  LTO grew up fast though, and in 2007, it became capable of holding up to 800 GBs!  And the roadmap for he future looks bright as well. On average, the capacity of the LTO tapes has doubled every 2-3 years.

The tape capacity, coupled with its relatively cheap price tag ($30-$40 for the tapes), makes it a valuable asset to backing up large files, for instance, video files.  It is now one of the best selling tapes on the market.  Its most prominent use?  You guessed it, backup.

The Quantum A-Series tape drive.

But the tapes won’t do any good without a drive to put them in.  Believe me, I’ve tried everything; yelling at the tapes, bribing the tapes, waterboarding the tapes, nothing works!  Then I heard a rumor that they will do whatever you say if you put them in a tape drive.  Seems logical to me.  Now, there are several LTO drives on the market, and they do alright for their purpose I suppose.   But Quantum has created a special LTO drive, the A-Series drive.  This drive was created with the post production market in mind, particularly regarding large media backup.  One great selling point of the drive is that it has a built in server. With the build in server software there is no need for any additional software to do backups, and nothing to install.

In addition to that, the A-Series is network based, so it is highly convenient that the drive can be accessed by multiple computers, as opposed to the standard method of having to nomadically hook the drive up to each separate computer that you’d like to use it on, moving it around constantly.   This is one of (if not the only) LTO drive on the market that has this networking ability.

The Series-A server interface.

The actual process of putting files on, and taking files off of the tapes is done through the drive’s web interface.  It is highly convenient that you can archive a project and order new underwear on Amazon with the same program.  There are some problems with the interface, some of which got fixed in recent updates, others that still remain to this day.  For example, one thing that has gotten fixed since was in the right click drop down menu, the “Eject Tape” and “Erase Tape” commands were literally next to each other.  This is almost cartoon-like in its insanity, much like building a robot and putting the “Self Destruct” button half an inch away from its “Off” button.  But things like that got fixed upon request, hey, pobody’s nerfect.

A-Series Drive with tape loaded in. It's good to go!

One of the earliest problems with the drive was a simple confusion with the reality of deleting folders on a tape.  That reality is that you can’t. It’s all or nothing when it comes to tape based archiving.  It is a linear device and can’t be defragmented, much like video tape.  Though, it is possible to delete the contents of an entire tape.  So what that means is if you have a tape with 200 GB on it, and you add a 100GB video to the tape (see: WatchOut), and then you realize, “Oh wait, I already added that 100 GB video to a different tape last week!”  Unless you want to erase the previous 200 GB that were already on the tape, there is no way to delete the 100 GB of previously archived video that you just put on the new tape.  So that is lost space, and granted it is “cheap” tape (costing between $30-$40), but it still feels wasteful to lose ¼ of your tape due to this.  That has nothing to do with the hardware or the software, that simply has to do with tape in general.

Now, when you deal with the Series-A drive, you have to deal with a ton of characters.  A lot of them you will want nothing to do with.  Take Quotation Mark for example, never invite that guy to your house, he won’t shut up the whole time he’s there.  And don’t even get me started on Asterisk, you don’t want to know what he did at my cousin Tony’s wine mixer.  There is actually a blacklist of jerks that weren’t allowed into the LTO drive:

The Usual Suspects: I bet one of them is Keyser Soze.

If you attempted to sneak in any of these characters into your archive party, any file associated would get bounced out of the club with them (something I sadly know too well in real life…).  They just wouldn’t be included into the archive. This has to do with the fact that the software that was built into the drive is set to be very strict, and follow Windows format.   So all Mac people must conform to the tyranny of Bill Gates for at least one element of this process.

In previous versions of the software, there was little to no indication that anything was skipped at all, because the transfer summary that shows in the interface used to not exactly work (which was related to a Java problem I believe).  In addition to that, when you would put files on a tape (if I filled a tape with 345 of 400 GB), it was hard to certify that the files actually made it on to the tape, because if you mounted the tape in the Finder and did “Get Info”, the Finder would say that there was actually 100 GB less on the tape than what was in the original archived project!  That of course makes you incredibly nervous that your files aren’t going to be backed up properly.  There is apparently a discrepancy between the Finder and reality itself.   The only real way to see how much space is left on a tape is to put in in the drive, and see for yourself how much is left when it shows it in the interface.  (I keep track of all of these “space remaining” numbers in an Excel document. It’s old school, but it works for an easy reference to how much space is left on each tape)

The interface let's you know plain and simply how much space is really on your tape.

Another small element worth noting in the battle between tapes and hard drives is the speed it takes to access your files.  While the actual process of transferring files on and off your archive is faster on tape, the time it takes to locate the files are significantly different.  Think about it this way, if you’ve taken your date from the saturday night sock-hop to the top of Make-Out Canyon in your DeLorean, and you pop in your Run-DMC mix tape cassette, and you want to listen to track 9 (because sometimes words can’t express love the way that the song “My Adidas” can), then you have to sit there and wait for your cassette to fast forward throughout the entire tape until it gets to track 9.   Where in contrast, if you were to pop in your Run-DMC mix CD, you could instantly go to track 9 without having to fast forward over the other tracks.   The wait isn’t too bad (maybe 2 minutes on a bad day) for tape fast forwarding, so it’s only a problem if you’re horribly impatient.  So, while a drive is instant access (like any folder in the Finder), the other benefits of the tapes should outweigh its inability to instantly access files.

Run-DMC helped popularize tape based archiving in the early '90s with their chart topping smash hit, "I'm Gonna Back Up Dat Booty (Right Onto My Tape Drive)".

Next week I’ll post Part 2. It’s an in depth look at how the Quantum A-Series drive actually works, and how to make money with it!  

We will also explore how to cook LTO tapes into a delicious winter stew, how to turn your A-Series drive into a muffler for a Dodge Ram, and we will discuss my brief stint as a vocalist for Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young & Roberts.

**DISCLAIMER**  THE STATEMENTS MADE IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE MAY OR MAY NOT BE FALSE.

Step one, we purchased the newly released (at the time, early 2007) G-Speed XL, 8TB, 16 drive 4 Gbit Fibre system, a new ATTO Celerity FC-42ES Fibre card, and a new Quad MacPro to hook it all into. The result was a super fast edit system that could handle anything we threw at it. 

Here we are just over a year later, and faced with almost all of our jobs going to HD (Mostly the Panasonic DVCProHD format) and continuously running out of drive space, we decided to buy a second unit. We went with another G-Speed based on our great experience, but this time bought a 12TB system. Once formatted you have about 10TB of usable space. We purchased another ATTO card, ran about 50′ of new fibre and were ready to receive the drive! 

One thing I didn’t do the first time was take “un-boxing” photos. This time, I remembered. I know it’s a bit geeky, but the video geek in you will enjoy it. 

So now we have two dedicated RAID system, and two rooms that can handle all of the HD jobs coming up. What’s the next step? A fibre switch, management software, and a media controller computer. Not this year though, that sounds like a nice 2009 upgrade.